Prospective Early Childhood Teachers Research Articles

Impact of religion on Turkish prospective early childhood teachers’ judgments of fact

The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of religion on prospective early childhood teachers’ judgments of fact and reasoning. Six hundred and sixteen prospective early childhood teachers from seven different cities and universities in Turkey participated in the study. Participants read the religious story of ‘King Solomon and the Ant’ and responded to the following questions: (1) Can Solomon converse with ants? (2) If yes, why, or no, why not? Please explain your answer with one sentence. Findings revealed that 520 of the participants (84%) responded to the first question affirmatively and 96 (16%) of the participants responded negatively. Among positive responders, 494 (80%) provided religious reasoning, while 83 (13.5%) laid out natural reasoning; 29 (4.7%) resorted to literary reasoning; and 10 (1.6%) offered uninformative explanations for their responses. Analysis revealed that participants’ responses did not differ by their class level at the university. Recommendations are provided for the relevance of these findings for teacher education.

Turkish prospective early childhood teachers’ emotional intelligence level and its relationship to their parents’ parenting styles

The current study explored Turkish prospective early childhood teachers’ emotional intelligence scores in order to determine whether levels indicated differentiations according to grade level, and parenting style. Participants responded to the Turkish version of the Parenting Style Inventory and Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS). EIS also contains the Perception of Own Emotions (POE), Understanding Others’ Emotions (UOE) and Regulating Emotions (RE) subscales. Study findings revealed that participants had moderate scores on the POE, UOE, and RE subscales and for whole emotional intelligence. Significant differences in total emotional intelligence and some subscales were found among grade levels and parenting styles. However findings showed that prospective teachers’ EI level did not increase as their professional education level increases. Also, prospective teachers with neglecting parents obtained the lowest mean scores from the total scale and every subscale for EIS. The study concluded that teacher education programs should support emotional development too.

Does early childhood teacher education foster professional competencies? Professional competencies of beginners and graduates in different education tracks in Germany

In this study, the development of prospective early childhood teachers' competencies during teacher education is investigated. In detail, early childhood teachers' beliefs about the relevance of competencies, their competence-related self-concept and objective measures of knowledge regarding language and language development were assessed. Altogether the sample consists of 1120 prospective early childhood teachers of different educational tracks in Germany (professional schools and universities), half of the sample at the beginning and the other half at the end of preservice teacher education. Descriptive analyses give insight into perceived relevance and competence-related self-concepts in various domains and language-related knowledge at the beginning and the end of teacher education. Multilevel analyses show that differences in subjective and objective competence-facettes between beginners and graduates as well as between students of different educational tracks exist. Implications for early childhood teacher education are discussed.

Building Prospective Early Childhood Teachers Content Knowledge Through Historical Reasoning Tasks

The preparation of future teachers of young children should incorporate attention to the developmental markers at the heart of developmentally appropriate practice and ground early childhood subject matter learning in disciplinary perspectives, engagement, and thinking essential for later disciplinary learning. With this focus in mind, I described an instructional sequence designed to engage teacher candidates in historical reasoning tasks where they considered the conceptual resources they used to support their own historical reasoning as a point of entry for considering the conceptual resources young children have at their disposal. I presumed that such a comparison would allow candidates to develop the kind of content knowledge for teaching, enabling them to best leverage children’s historical reasoning as a means of deepening children’s historical knowledge and understanding. The analysis indicated that candidates began to construct initial developmental trajectories of children’s historical reasoning and raised pedagogical questions suggesting they began to envision themselves as teachers of historical inquiry.

Does Early Childhood Teacher Education Affect Students' Cognitive Orientations?

Early childhood teachers may differ regarding the knowledge base they use when making professional decisions. In this study two orientations are distinguished: the orientation towards scientific knowledge vs. the orientation towards intuition and subjective experience. As different tracks in early childhood teacher education qualify for professional practice, and as education of early childhood teachers matters with regard to developmental outcomes of children, knowledge orientations of prospective early childhood teachers attending universities and attending vocational schools are investigated and compared. Knowledge orientations were assessed by means of a questionnaire. After propensity score matching of 402 beginners and 402 graduates, multilevel analyses indicate that scientific orientation at the end of teacher education was higher and subjective orientation was lower than at the beginning. Furthermore, scientific knowledge orientation of BA-students was higher, subjective orientation was lower than of students at professional schools. Implications of these results regarding education of early childhood teachers are discussed.

Knowledge Orientations of Prospective Early Childhood Teachers: A Study of Students' Scientific Versus Subjective Orientations in Teacher Education Courses in Germany

Recent changes in the system of early childhood teacher education in Germany raise the question of whether different academic levels of early childhood teacher education lead to different beliefs and orientations. In this study, prospective early childhood teachers' orientations to scientific knowledge and to research were explored. A questionnaire addressing orientations to the utility of research, educational and psychological theories versus orientations to intuitive theories and personal experience was completed by 712 prospective early childhood teachers. In a latent profile analysis, two types of orientation profiles could be identified: (a) an orientation towards subjective theories, lay theories, and subjective experience, and (b) an orientation towards scientific theories and research results. Results are discussed from the perspective of professionalization in early childhood teacher education.

Learning Classroom Management Through Web-Based Case Instruction: Implications for Early Childhood Teacher Education

In this article, we report a research project on web-based case instruction that was developed and implemented to allow prospective early childhood teachers to be exposed to various dilemmas faced by practicing teachers. The goal of this project was to design an instructional tool and method that could help prospective teachers expand their notion of classroom management beyond a set of techniques. We collected 23 prospective teachers’ pre and postessays before and after the 3-week implementation of the web-based case instruction, along with surveys and a focus group interview data. The initial data analysis results indicated that this instructional method was effective for (a) promoting prospective teachers’ awareness of multiple perspectives, (b) encouraging them to explore diverse ways of problem solving, and (c) articulating their justification based on a sense of moral responsibility and affective engagement. We conclude with implications for future research and early childhood teacher education.

Accentuate the Positive: The Relationship Between Positive Explanatory Style and Academic Achievement of Prospective Elementary Teachers

This research examines 480 current event-explanation units using the CAVE technique (Schulman, Castellon, & Seligman, 1989) to note the relationship between positive and negative explanatory style and achievement of prospective early childhood and upper elementary female teachers. This study found a significant positive relationship between explanatory style for positive events and academic performance in stressful scenarios. Surprisingly, optimism and pessimism in one's explanatory style for negative events was found to have no significant relationship to academic performance. An important implication of these findings is that the quality of our attributions for positive events, not negative events, helps to sustain performance levels in demanding situations. Interventions for enhancing explanatory style therefore should focus on the positive.

Developing Cultural Competency in Early Childhood Preservice Educators Through a Cultural Self-Analysis Project

Today more than ever, preparation for diversity is essential for all teachers. Hence, teacher preparation programs are charged with preparing culturally competent teachers who have the knowledge, skills, and disposition to work with children and families from cultures different from their own. This article investigates an innovative approach, the Cultural Self-Analysis (CSA) Project, to accomplish this task with 26 prospective early childhood teachers. CSA Project steps are presented. Data collected on multiple levels were analyzed using constant comparative methodologies. Findings from this initial investigation suggest the CSA Project holds promise as an approach to prepare culturally responsive teachers in three major ways. Participants reported increased confidence and comfort, preparedness to facilitate home connections with culturally diverse persons, and enlightenment of teacher roles/responsibilities beyond academic instruction. We respectfully thank Dr. Laura C. Dominguez and David Grant who kindly volunteered their time, expertise, and feedback in the preparation of this article.

Teaching physics to prospective elementary teachers: Bridging gaps or widening chasms

The education of prospective Elementary and Early Childhood (E&EC) teachers to teach science has been an on-going challenge for science teacher educators. Accordingly, a course in physical science was planned and implemented especially for prospective E&EC teachers. The purpose of this study was to understand the nature of the enacted curriculum and about the forces which constrained its evolution. Miller, the teacher of the course, had no prior experience in teaching prospective E&EC teachers and many of his experiences as a university level teacher were based on his teaching of physics majors. These experiences shaped his approach to teaching the course as did his years as a basketball coach. Miller was an expert in physics and constructed his role as teaching students significant scientific truths. Miller saw the purpose of the course as being to educate the students in science, not to prepare them to teach science. He was unwilling to address the goals of students that were oriented strongly toward becoming better teachers. The beliefs of the teacher constrained the enacted curriculum to an extent that gaps between the needs of students and the enacted curriculum were wider at the end of the course than they were at the beginning.