The Comparison of Parents' Perceptions of Early Educators' Real and Ideal Personality and Optimism

Abstract

Given the importance of personality traits and optimism of early childhood educators in their work with children, this research was aimed at comparing their actual and ideal personality traits and optimism from the perspective of the parents. The study involved 295 parents from three counties of the Republic of Croatia. Parents evaluated the real and ideal personality traits and the optimism of 41 early childhood educators from the six kindergartens their children were enrolled. Two questionnaires were applied: TIPI for measuring the personality traits and the LOT-R for measuring optimism. Parents have rated the real and ideal educators' personality traits and optimism at very high levels. Testing the significance of differences, the results revealed that there are significant differences between the realistic and ideal image of educators' personality and optimism. In other words, ideal educators are considerably more extroverted, agreeable, conscientious, more emotionally stable, more open and more optimistic than their profiles based on realistic ratings.