Early Childhood Educators' Perceptions of Quality and School Climate in Preschool Programs
Open Access
- Author:
- Shen, Chia-Shen
- Graduate Program:
- Curriculum and Instruction
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- September 14, 2005
- Committee Members:
- Thomas Daniel Yawkey, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Jamie Myers, Committee Member
Edgar Paul Yoder, Committee Member
John W Tippeconnic Iii, Committee Member - Keywords:
- program quality
early childhood program
school climate - Abstract:
- The primary purpose of this study was to investigate preschool teachers¡¦ perceptions of early childhood program quality and school climate for the programs in which these teachers worked. The target population for this study was the nursery school teachers¡¦ cohorts in the Department of Early Childhood Education and Care at the Meiho Institute of Technology, Pingtung, Taiwan. A total of 213 completed questionnaires, for a response rate of 90%, were collected for data analysis. Descriptive statistics, a one-way analysis of variance with Tukey¡¦s honestly significant difference, an independent t-test, a bivariate correlation analysis, and a regression analysis were performed for the data analysis in this study. The level of significance for testing each of the hypotheses was p„T .05. The conclusions of this study are as follows. (a) Teachers believed that their nursery schools possessed higher quality in the categories of teacher qualifications, children¡¦s experiences, and teacher behaviors than in the categories of classroom structure and program structure. (b) Teachers believed that their nursery schools possessed better school climate quality in the dimensions of collegiality, professional growth, decision making, goal consensus, and innovativeness than in the dimensions of reward system, supervisor support, clarity of organizational functions, task orientation, and physical setting. Specifically, teachers believed that the reward system and supervisor support were unsatisfied in their nursery. (c) The study revealed a moderate and positive relationship between (a) quality and school climate of early childhood programs, and (b) structural quality and process quality of early childhood programs. (d) The results indicated that teachers¡¦ characteristics (i.e., monthly income) did play a role in influencing teachers¡¦ perceptions of school climate in early childhood programs. (e) Teachers who worked in rural area programs reported a significantly higher mean score than did those from urban area programs only on the item ¡§teacher stability is high¡¨. (f) Teachers who worked in private programs reported significantly higher mean scores than did those from public programs on ¡§the total enrollment number of children is an appropriate size¡¨, ¡§age-appropriate toys and materials are available¡¨, and ¡§collegiality¡¨.