• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.105-128
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• 2021

Objective: This study aimed to explore the experience and meaning of pre-service early childhood teachers who practiced health promoting activities for themselves. Methods: Research participants were 115 pre-service early childhood teachers enrolled in the health education for children course at one college in G region. The reports of activity records of their eight-week long health promotion activities were collected as qualitative data followed by content analysis being implemented. Results: First, the experience of the health promoting activities the participants took part in was categorized into 'Early phase of experience: A mix of worries and anticipation, and success and failure', 'Mid phase of experience: Being motivated by physical changes and records', and 'Late phase of experience: Continuous execution through habituation.' Second, the meaning of health promotion activities the participants took part in was categorized into 'A great opportunity for introspection', 'A meaningful start of college life', and 'A valuable chance to consider desirable roles of a teacher for early childhood health education.' Conclusion/Implications: The results of this study suggest that pre-service early childhood teachers should pay close attention to their health management, and that contents that emphasize the importance of teachers' health should be included in health education.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.41-57
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• 2023

Objective: The objective of this study is to classify the personality types of early childhood teachers and examine the variations in teacher self-efficacy and play support based on these personality types. Methods: The subjects of this study consisted of 302 early childhood teachers responsible for children aged 3 to 5 years old. The collected data were analyzed using cluster analysis and analysis of covariance. Results: Early childhood teachers were categorized into four types: the "sensitive group" (29%), the "conservative group" (10%), the "passive group" (28%), and the "active group" (34%). Significant differences in mean scores were observed for teacher self-efficacy and play support across these personality types. Notably, the active group demonstrated the highest levels of both teacher self-efficacy and play support. Consequently, the active group emerged as the most effective and functional personality type among early childhood teachers. Conclusion/Implications: This study emphasized the significance of early childhood teachers' personality types in their teaching practices, underscoring the importance of developing in-service and pre-service teacher education programs that take into account these personality types.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.16 no.12
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• pp.749-760
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• 2016

The purpose of this study was to identify the effects influencing path behaviors of pre-service childcare teachers to present the educational and social welfare measures for promoting children's character development and preventing the alienation of the elderly. The subjects for this study are 176 students who completed the childcare teacher course in four universities located in G city and J province. The scale of this study utilized modified, supplemented scale used in previous studies[1][2] that was constituted for a newly transformed model based on planned behavior theories. The contents of research design include salience beliefs such as attitude beliefs, normative beliefs, control beliefs, etc. as well as a model of planned behavior theories such as attitudes, subjective norms, perceived behavior control, behavior intension, behavior, etc. This study conducted frequency analysis and regression analysis for the data collected by using the SPSS 18.0 for Windows. From the results of verification, all hypothesis was supported. Thus, usefulness of this theory was reconfirmed, and the results of this study are to be utilized as basic materials for professionals who make every endeavor in a perspective of children's character development and in a perspective of reducing alienation phenomenon of the elderly.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.29-49
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• 2014

This study focused on how early childhood in-service teachers and pre-service teachers understood the concept of Forest Education. By applying the analysis of conceptual maps, introduced by Novak and Gowin's (1983, 1984), this study examined the number of upper category and subcategories, characteristics, hierarchy, and density of teachers' knowledge of Forest Education. 39 early childhood teachers and 60 pre-service teachers participated in this study. First, in-service teachers put 'nature(forest)' and 'living creatures' in the highest level of knowledge of Forest Education. On the other hands, pre-service teachers put 'the effect of Forest Education' and 'program' as well as 'nature(forest)' in the highest level of knowledge. In-service teachers seemed to construct their knowledge by understanding Forest Education as curriculum or activities such as math, language, music or multicultural education. Therefore they had a tendency to talk more about specific concepts including four seasons, insects, air, or climate change. However, pre-service teachers described 'the interconnectedness between human and nature', 'deep relationship with nature' and 'provision of nature.' This tendency might relate to their prior educational experiences of Eco-centered Early Childhood Education. With regards to the density and hierarchy of knowledge on Forest Education, both groups revealed the relatively low degree of density with average of around 2.00. This result can be interpreted that both groups of teachers might not have strong hierarchical and organizational knowledge of Forest Education. For the teacher education, philosophical background and practical knowledge of Forest Education should be included more.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.127-146
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• 2015

This study is to examine the metaphor of pre-service early childhood teachers for the children with disabilities through the disability studies perspective. For this purpose, 213 pre-service early childhood teachers who were the students of universities in Busan and Gyeongnam area were selected as target objects, and data were collected from Sep. 15 to 29, 2015. The collected data were categorized and quantified based on the systematic metaphor analysis. As a result, the metaphor for the children with disabilities of pre-service early childhood teachers were categorized into 4 types such as medicine-limit type, medicine-diversity type, society-limit type and society-diversity. The result of this study would be utilized as basic data required for consideration with regard to the direction of integrated education and for increasing the professional speciality of teachers who perform the integrated education in the training course for pre-service early childhood teachers.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.145-167
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• 2012

The objective of this study is to investigate the meaning of pre-service educare teachers' experience about child safety management classes based on Problem Based Learning (PBL). The participants in this study were thirty five sophomores majoring in Social Welfare, and fifteen weeks of data were collected. The participants were given five problems that were related with real situations. During the given period, they made documents from reflective journals, group or individual interviews, and online community resources. Analyzing the documents sheds light on the meaning of the pre-service educare teachers' experience. The results are as follows: First, pre-service educare teachers found themselves recovering confidence, earning recognitions from others, and pursuing their study. Second, they showed continuous conflicts not only with the PBL approach but also with themselves and group members. Finally, they experienced mutual help and interactions among the group members thorough their cooperative learning and they realized the meaning of cooperative learning by means of comparisons and references between the groups. In conclusion, this study confirms the applicability of PBL to the educare teacher training courses and points out specific ways to alleviate the conflicts in applying PBL to class needs in future studies.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.9 no.5
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• pp.181-200
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• 2013

This study aimed at exploring how an instructor constructs meanings through content-based instruction (CBI) offered to pre-service teachers majoring in early childhood education. The course, early childhood mathematics education, was conducted during the spring semester in 2011. This study adopted a narrative inquiry, and data were collected through observations, interviews, and work samples. This study found that during the whole process from the preparation phase to the end-of-program evaluation, the instructor captured diverse challenging moments. During the preparation phase, she needed to have careful orchestration in designing lessons in order to overcome her feeling of pressure as a non-native speaker of English and design the integration of contents and English language learning to be truly powerful. In the phase of implementation, the lack of student motivation and building a good rapport between the instructor and the students were certainly challenges. The result of the student evaluations weakened her desire to implement CBI. The instructor incorporated diverse instructional strategies to overcome the obstacles. The instructor's experiences in this study will positively shape future educators' thinking and learning about meaningful and appropriate academic English instruction for content-area teaching of college students who were majoring in early childhood education.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.25-44
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• 2015

The aim of this research is to provide more proper teaching practicum chances through getting practical implications by pre-service early childhood teachers' perception of teaching practicum through investigating pre-service early childhood teacher's perception of teaching practicum using metaphors. Participants were 121 pre-service early childhood teachers'. They were early childhood education freshmen and sophomores who did not experience teaching practicum. The opened survey expressing metaphors about teaching practicum was conducted. The results showed that participants suggested 114 metaphors and those were coded and divided. The results were categorized into 11 types including 'It is hard but also fruitful.', 'It is a new experience.', 'It is hard and difficult.', 'It is meaningful and important.', 'I am afraid and worried.', 'I learn a lot.', 'I have to go though it.', 'I have to make an effort.', 'It is pleasant.', 'I am evaluated.' and 'others'. We expect that this research will give a chance to review what the teaching practicum means to pre-service early childhood teachers and make plans for pre-service early childhood teachers to prepare the teaching practicum with proper perception.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.8 no.6
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• pp.219-239
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• 2012

The purpose of this study was to analyze pre-service teachers' perceptions and change on the images about young children. The subjects of this study were 31 students in the early childhood department at a university. It was a longitudinal study conducted for four years. The data regarding the images that students had about young children were collected by having them answer a question. The question was "Young children are... Because of..." Subjects were asked to answer that question when they were freshmen and then, to answer the same question when they were seniors in order to see the change. A content analysis and frequency were conducted. The study of the results could be summarized as follows. Firstly, from their first year to senior year, the images that pre-service teachers perceived such as, vibrant active beings and beings with various characteristics" did not change. However, the images such as "being who was capable of interacting with environments" had changed. And the new image which viewed a child as a being who should be respected emerged. Secondly, the factors that influenced the image changes were based on the experience of working as assistant teachers at an early childhood setting, and practicum. Therefore, a systematic work on assistant teachers should be done and a concept about child-center education should be built.

• Korean Journal of Childcare and Education
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.171-188
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• 2013

We investigated whether divergent thinking attitudes mediate the relationship between self-esteem and creative teaching beliefs among teachers. We examined differences in the mediating model we proposed in the groups of pre-service and in-service child care teachers. We found differences in the pre-service and in-service child care teachers in the proposed mediating model. Especially in the pre-service child care teachers, the mediating effect of divergent thinking attitudes was confirmed. There was a significant effect from self esteem to creative teaching beliefs and also a significant effect from divergent thinking attitudes to creative teaching beliefs. But in-service child care teachers, there was neither direct nor indirect effect of self-esteem to creative teaching beliefs. Suggestions for more studies and for better in-service education for the pre-service and in-service child care teachers are recommended for the future.