Study on Day-care Teacher's Personal Science Teaching Efficacy

보육교사의 과학 교수 개인효능감에 관한 연구 - 충남지역을 중심으로 -

This study was conducted to investigate the antecedents of teachers' science teaching efficacy in day-care setting. Also, this study aimed to identify relationships between day-care teachers' personal science teaching efficacy and their perspectives on early childhood science education. The subjects were 176 day-care teachers in rural area of ChoongCheongNam-Do. The survey method was used to collect data from the day-care teacher. The instrument were Rigg & Enochs(1990)'s Science Teaching Efficacy Belief and Kim(l998)'s scales for the Goa1s in Early Childhood Science Education. Main results were as follows: 1. Day-care teachers' personal science teaching efficacy were significantly related with the personal variables such as teachers' education, in-service science workshops, science book reading, science-related hobby but not with teachers' age, pre-service science credits and total years of teaching experience. 2. Among the environmental variables, science activity areas were significantly associated with day-care teachers' personal science teaching efficacy. However, location of day-care center, age of children, number of children, teacher-child ratio, facilities for science education and scheduled time for science education did not affect it. 3. Day-care teachers of high content- and process-oriented goals in early childhood science education were highly efficacious teacher, while the teachers of low content- and process-oriented perspectives gained the lowest score. However, the content-oriented teachers and the process-oriented teachers did not differ in terms of day-care teachers' personal science teaching efficacy.