ECRP Vol. 4 No. 2
Fall 2002

Papers

Education Matters in the Nurturing of the Beliefs of Preschool Caregivers and Teachers
Mary Benson McMullen & Kazim Alat

Changing Curriculum for Early Childhood Education in England
Young-Ihm Kwon

The Continuity Framework: A Tool for Building Home, School, and Community Partnerships
E. Glyn Brown, Carolynn Amwake, Tim Speth, & Catherine Scott-Little

Development of a Comprehensive Community Assessment of School Readiness
David A. Murphey & Catherine E. Burns

Observations and Reflections

Modeling Collaboration, In-Depth Projects, and Cognitive Discourse: A Reggio Emilia and Project Approach Course
Julie Bullard & Janis R. Bullock

Features

The Apple Project
Debbie Danyi, Heather Sebest, Amy Thompson, & Lisa Young

Training and Education of Early Childhood Teachers:
Selected Citations from the ERIC Database

ERIC/EECE News

Education Matters in the Nurturing of the Beliefs of Preschool Caregivers and Teachers

Mary Benson McMullen & Kazim Alat
Indiana University

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Abstract

This study examined the relationship between educational background and the philosophical orientation of early childhood educators who worked as caregivers and teachers of preschoolers, ages 3 to 6 years, in one midwestern state (Indiana) in the United States. Specifically, the highest level of education attained by the early childhood professionals and their educational background (whether specific to working with young children or not) were compared to their self-reported beliefs about best practice with young children, using developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) as the philosophy for comparison. A comparison of factor analyses from this study and from studies conducted by Charlesworth and colleagues in 1991 and 1993 indicate clear similarities. A significant, positive correlation was found between level of education and self-reported DAP beliefs scores, and results from 2 x 3 ANOVAs of the three factors that emerged from these data indicate that professionals with a bachelor’s degree or higher more strongly adopted DAP as a philosophy overall than colleagues with less education, whereas coursework specific to working with young children was found to be significant only in the case of beliefs related to child-initiated learning. Thus, in general, participants with 4 years of college or more, even if in an unrelated field, held stronger DAP beliefs than those with less education, even if that education was directly related to working with young children. The article suggests that more research needs to be done to examine whether a 4-year degree may be most desirable in terms of ensuring better-qualified preschool teachers. The article also discusses the implications of this finding for policy and advocacy in the field of early childhood education.

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Introduction

Early childhood education professionals in the United States possess diverse qualifications--a diversity that is considered a distinctive, if not celebrated, feature of the profession (Hyson, 2001; Saluja, Early, & Clifford, 2001; Wise & Leibbrand, 1993). Does this diversity in the background and preparedness of early childhood caregivers and teachers matter? Current research confirms findings from the past two decades that teacher qualifications significantly affect the quality of care and education provided to young children (Bowman, Donovan, & Burns, 2001; Lazar, Darlington, Murray, Royce, & Snipper, 1982; Oden, Schweinhart, & Weikart, 2000; Phillips, Mekos, Scarr, McCartney, & Abbott-Shim, 2000; Schweinhart & Weikart, 1999; Whitebook, Sakai, Gerber, & Howes, 2001) and that higher qualifications in preschool children's caregivers and teachers contribute to more positive short- and long-term outcomes for these children (Kontos & Wilcox-Herzog, 1997, 2001; Whitebook, Howes, & Phillips, 1989).

Despite all of this evidence from research about the importance of the qualifications of the professionals who work with young children, currently, at any given preschool or child care program at any given location in the United States, we are still likely to find the following extremes in the caregivers and teachers:

• Some have earned college or graduate degrees, while others possess a high school diploma or its equivalent.
• Some have studied early childhood education or child development, while others have not.
• Some have a great deal of experience working with young children, while others do not.

Another aspect of this reality is that preschool caregivers and teachers with or without education beyond high school, with or without specialized coursework or training for working with young children, and with or without experience in the field tend to be compensated similarly and to be recognized as equals among early childhood professionals (see, e.g., Krajec, Bloom, Talan, & Clark, 2001). The diversity of qualifications among early childhood professionals may negatively affect the quality of care and education received by children, the working conditions of professional staff, and the way that early childhood professionals are perceived in our culture.

At the same time that we tolerate such variation in the qualifications of our professional workforce, there is much agreement among early childhood scholars and practitioners about what content knowledge in preservice and inservice training and education is "best" for our caregivers and teachers, at least philosophically. There is general acceptance that preschool curricula and environments built solidly upon the principles of developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) ensure high quality for young children, and thus, currently, the values related to DAP as a philosophy (Bredekamp, 1987; Bredekamp & Copple, 1997) permeate most 2- and 4-year undergraduate early childhood education and child development professional preparation programs in the United States (Dunn & Kontos, 1997). In fact, DAP philosophy is the very foundation upon which the Child Development Associate’s (CDA) credentialing courses are built.

Developmentally appropriate practice is not without its critics, however. Whereas some of the profession’s leaders such as Charlesworth (1998) assert that, "DAP is for everyone," others argue persuasively that, despite its emphasis on cultural appropriateness, DAP is not "appropriate" for all children in the United States (see, e.g., Cannella, 1997; Swadener & Kessler, 1991; Mallory & New, 1994; O’Brien, 2000). Some of the critics assert, for instance, that multicultural education that relies simply upon the cultural appropriateness described in the 1997 DAP philosophy statement, or even as expanded in so-called DCAP (developmentally and culturally appropriate practices), reinforces stereotyping, does not acknowledge the unique capabilities of individual children, and, ultimately, fails to promote healthy self-identity in children. In particular, the harshest critics of DAP point out that it is a philosophy developed by predominately White, middle- to upper-middle-class people of Western European descent, and that, as such, it favors children from parents within the already privileged classes, thus maintaining their positions of power within U.S. culture.

However, there are no definitive answers and too little evidence to date from the research about how much and what kind of education most fully prepares early childhood educators to work in this field. There have been, however, several notable and theoretically sound efforts to suggest the nature of, and the direction in which we should head, in the restructuring and design of our preservice and inservice professional development programs (see, e.g., Horm-Wingerd & Hyson, 2000).

Thus, admittedly, we still have much to learn and much more to discuss as a field about what teaching beliefs and practices (DAP versus other innovative practices versus more traditional methods, etc.) lead to optimal outcomes for young children, information that would have huge implications for recommended preservice and inservice education of caregivers and teachers. There is, however, another fundamental unknown for teacher educators and all those who prepare or train preservice and inservice teachers: we do not clearly understand the mechanism involved in the adoption of and then the transmission of beliefs about practices into actual classroom behaviors. This process is very complicated and as yet not fully understood (see McMullen, 1997, 1998). We cannot claim with confidence, for instance, that specialized professional development, in which preservice and inservice professionals have been steeped in DAP, ensures that caregivers and teachers will internalize these beliefs, and that their beliefs then become principles upon which they build their practice, design their learning environments, implement curricula, and assess student learning and development.

We have, however, made progress in identifying many factors that have been found to influence the philosophical beliefs adopted by caregivers and teachers (Buchanan, Burts, Bidner, White, & Charlesworth, 1998; Hao, 2000; McMullen, 1999). Educational background is one such mediator of beliefs in early childhood that has been identified in the research and should be studied more closely because it can influence policy, teacher education reform, and advocacy initiatives. Educational background, in this context, refers to both the level of overall education and the type of coursework or content covered during that education. Some studies in the literature conclude that the overall level of education attained is the most significant educational background factor in the adoption of a DAP philosophy (Kontos & Wilcox-Herzog, 2001; Morgan et al., 1994). In other studies, it is not the level but the type of education that matters most (see, e.g., Cassidy, Buell, Pugh-Hoese, & Russell, 1995); teachers who have taken coursework or engaged in training specific to the acquisition of the knowledge and skills believed to be connected to working effectively with young children have been found to engage in more behaviors associated with a DAP philosophy (Howes, 1983; Scarr, Eisenberg, & Deater-Deckard, 1994; Snider & Fu, 1990).

In this study, the researchers examined the relationship between educational background and the philosophical orientation of early childhood educators who worked as caregivers and teachers of preschoolers, ages 3 to 6 years, in one midwestern state in the United States. Specifically, the highest level of education attained and the type of educational preparation (whether specific to working with young children or not) were compared to self-reported beliefs about practice, using developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) as the philosophy for comparison. For the purpose of this study, the term "beliefs" was operationally defined to refer to the self-reported working philosophies or theories of practice held by the practitioners whom the researchers examined; these beliefs were examined as they related to statements generated from the original DAP position paper (Bredekamp, 1987). The hypothesis tested was that the self-reported beliefs of early childhood education (ECE) practitioners are different in terms of the level of overall education achieved and the type of educational preparation that they have had.

Method

Sample

Participants were 151 early childhood caregivers and teachers who worked with 3- to 6-year-old children in a variety of early childhood settings, including family child care homes, child care centers, Head Start centers, registered ministries connected with churches and synagogues, preschools connected to elementary school programs, and Montessori preschool programs. The participants had worked in the field for an average of 8.34 years (SD = 7.88; range < 1 to 40 years). In terms of experience in ECE settings, 55 (36.4%) were in the early years of their careers (0 to 3 years), 76 (50.3%) were in the middle years of their careers (4 to 14 years), and 20 (13.2%) were in the later years of their careers (more than 15 years).

As can be seen in Table 1, for statistical purposes, the sample was divided into three categories based upon whether participants' highest level of education was, as follows: a high school diploma, GED, or CDA; a bachelor's degree; or a graduate degree. Twenty-nine percent of the participants had achieved the lowest level of education, 29% had four years of college, and 32% had graduate degrees.

The participants in this study all indicated that they spent a significant portion of every workday in the direct, hands-on care or education of young children. Some, however, indicated that they also had part-time administrative duties, for example, as program directors, office managers, or teaching-team leaders.

Table 1
Demographic Characteristics of Participants (N = 151)

Measures

The questionnaire packet sent to each respondent included a demographic survey from which data were gathered on each respondent’s current position (age group of the children with whom they work, job title, whether they do any administrative work in addition to teaching, etc.), highest level of education achieved, type of coursework in their educational background, years of experience, and the context of their work setting (type of setting and program, whether full- or part-time, public or private, etc.). The questionnaire also included the Teacher Belief Scale (TBS) developed by Charlesworth et al. (1991), used in this study to measure the strength of the adoption of developmentally appropriate practices (DAP) as a philosophy of practice in the care and education of young children. The TBS is a widely used and popular instrument with early childhood researchers. The TBS is based upon DAP as outlined in the first National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) policy statement (Bredekamp, 1987), a statement that is familiar to most readers of this journal. The validity of the instrument was established by Charlesworth et al. (1991; 1993) in a series of observational studies used to confirm practitioners’ responses to factors that were identified using the TBS. High congruence was found between the factors and classroom observation in 3 out of 4 teachers examined in the 1991 study and 19 out of 20 teachers examined in the 1993 study. This factorial validity of the TBS was assessed using factor analysis and correlational analysis in which the relationship between practitioners’ perceptions of their own beliefs and actual, observable practices was explored. [See Charlesworth et al. (1991; 1993) for more complete information on the validity testing.]

Each TBS item is a statement that the respondent rates on a 5-point Likert scale from "Not Important at All" (ranked as 1) to "Extremely Important" (ranked as 5). Specifically, respondents were asked to indicate how important they believed the practice described in each statement was to them in terms of their own caregiving and teaching of 3- to 6-year-old children. For example, in response to item #22, "It is ____ for children to be instructed in recognizing the single letters of the alphabet, isolated from words," the respondents indicated whether they thought this statement was "Not at All Important," "Quite Unimportant," "Fairly Important," "Very Important," or "Extremely Important."

Procedures

The 151 preschool caregivers and teachers in this study were a subsample of a larger group of 440 early childhood professionals; the remaining 289 members of the complete sample included kindergarten teachers, infant/toddler caregivers, full-time administrators, college instructors, consultants, and students studying early childhood or child development, all of whom identified themselves as early childhood professionals. The population groups targeted for this study were those preschool caregivers and teachers (practitioners who worked daily, directly with children ages 3 to 6 years) who were members of or who attended the professional development activities provided by the state’s predominant early childhood professional organization, the Indiana Association for the Education of Young Children (IAEYC). The IAEYC is an affiliate group of the national organization that published the DAP policy statement(s) upon which the research questionnaire was based; therefore, it was anticipated that the sample would be skewed toward a stronger DAP orientation compared with the general population of all preschool caregivers and teachers in the state.

The complete sample was solicited in two ways: (1) through a mailing of 500 questionnaires to randomly selected members of the IAEYC (73% return rate) and (2) two months later, through insertion of the survey instrument packet in 500 randomly selected program guides out of 3000 total that were distributed on-site at the organization’s annual state early childhood professional development conference (15% return rate). Conferees who received a questionnaire in their conference materials were strongly cautioned not to complete a survey if they had already done so as part of the recent random mailing to the professional membership.

Results

Before comparing groups based upon the independent variables, the researchers tried to determine if there was a relationship among all of the variables of study. As shown in Table 2, Pearson correlation analysis was performed to determine whether there were any significant relationships among the study variables--specialized educational preparation, highest degree attained, and the overall level of adoption of developmentally appropriate practices as a philosophical belief in caregiving and teaching (total DAP scores on the TBS). Results from the correlation analysis reveal a significant correlation between highest degree obtained and DAP scores (r = .39, N = 151, p < .001).

Table 2
Intercorrelations for Scores on Specialized Educational Preparation, Highest Degree, and Total TBS Scores
(Strength of Self-Reported DAP Beliefs)

Differences between Groups

Data were analyzed using 2 x 3 (Specialized Educational Preparation x Highest Degree) two-way between subjects ANOVA. Prior to conducting the ANOVA, homogeneity of variances was tested because of the unequal n in each cell. Levene’s test revealed that the equal variances assumption of the ANOVA was not met (F(5,145) = 7.86, p < .001). Therefore, dependent variable scores (i.e., self-reported belief scores) were square-root transformed before the ANOVA was performed. Results indicated that there were significant main effects for specialized educational preparation (F(1,145) = 4.32, p < .05) and highest educational degree (F(2,145) = 15.62, p < .001) on overall DAP scores from the TBS instrument. There was no significant interaction effect between the educational background and the highest degree attained on the DAP scores (F(2,145) = 1.58, ns).

The first effect shows that specialized educational preparation had a significant effect on participants’ self-reported DAP beliefs. Although this effect was found to be significant, the effect was relatively weak (p = .044, η² = .28). For further investigation, we compared two educational preparation background groups (those with specialized educational preparation in ECE vs. non-ECE) using a t-test. Results indicated that there was no significant difference between the two groups in terms of mean scores. However, teachers with ECE backgrounds had relatively higher DAP scores (M = 163.43, SD = 12.38) than teachers with non-ECE backgrounds (M = 161.22, SD = 13.41).

The second effect indicates that there was a difference in DAP scores that was significantly related to participants’ highest educational degree. As shown in Table 3, three educational attainment levels were tested: Level 1. High School/GED/CDA/Associate’s Degree; Level 2. Bachelor’s Degree; and Level 3. Graduate Degree. The post-hoc analysis showed that teachers with less education had significantly lower DAP scores (M = 154.41, SD = 15.78) than teachers with bachelor’s degrees (M = 163.52, SD = 10.35) and graduate degrees (M = 167.24, SD = 11.00). Means and standard deviations for total TBS scores can be seen in Table 3.

Table 3
Means and Standard Deviations for Total TBS Scores

Factor Analysis of the Teacher Beliefs Scale

The results for the analysis of the TBS instrument of DAP scores showed means for the items that ranged from 3.42 to 4.93 (average SD = .35). Initial analysis revealed seven factors, which explained 58.18% of the variance. Because the last three items loaded with only one item each and with relatively high item loadings (.84, .80, -.68, respectively), these items were removed from further analyses. The principal components analysis revealed four factors with eigenvalues greater than 1, accounting for 47.72% of the item variance, which, when rotated (varimax) to simple structure, yielded moderate to high item loadings (ranging from .38 to .78) on the designated factors. Of these factors, Factor IV, composed of only two items, was removed after reliability testing because of its relatively low alpha (.30). The factors that remained were named as follows: Factor I. Teacher-Directed/Teacher-Controlled Activities and Materials; Factor II. Child/Individual-Initiated Learning; and Factor III. Child-Centered Literacy Activities. Factor reliability was assessed by Cronbach’s alpha. Moderate levels of internal consistency were obtained from items comprising these three factors (.87, .87, and .73, respectively).

Factor structure and related statistics can be seen in Table 4. Table 5 displays a comparison of the factor analysis results from this study with those obtained by Charlesworth et al. (1991; 1993). Although factor names differ across the studies, factor content is nearly identical; that is, Factor I (Teacher-Directed/Teacher-Control) in this study is almost a combination of Factor II and Factor IV in Charlesworth et al. (1991) and Factor I and VI in Charlesworth et al. (1993).

Table 4
Factor Structure, Eigenvalues, Cronbach’s Alpha, Means, and
Standard Deviation for the Teacher Beliefs Scale

Table 5
Comparison of Three Studies’ Factor Structure for the Teacher Beliefs Scale*

Differences across the Factors

To test whether there was a difference in this study among scores of Factor I, Factor II, and Factor III in terms of specialized educational preparation and highest degree attained, 2 x 3 two-way between subjects ANOVA was performed. Prior to analysis, Levene’s test was used to assess the homogeneity of variances. Because results showed that the groups were not equal in terms of variances (F(5,145) = 6.71, p < .001), a square root transformation was performed for total factor scores. For Factor I, results indicated that there was a significant main effect of highest degree (F(2,145) = 12.41, p < .001) on Factor I scores; that is, ECE professionals with graduate degrees expressed higher DAP beliefs (M = 60.58, SD = 5.47) than professionals with bachelor’s degrees (M = 57.52, SD = 6.60) and professionals with HS/GED/CDA/associate’s degrees (M = 52.89, SD = 10.34).

In the second analysis, ANOVA results showed significant main effects for both specialized educational preparation and highest degree obtained on Factor II scores, (F(1,145) = 8.48, p < .01; F(2,145) = 6.54, p < .01, respectively). However, there was no significant interaction effect between specialized educational preparation and highest degree obtained on the Factor II scores (F(2,145) = 1.65, ns). Post-hoc analysis indicated that caregivers and teachers in the HS/GED/CDA/associate’s degree group (M = 54.75, SD = 7.13) had significantly lower DAP belief scores than teachers with bachelor’s degrees (M = 57.27, SD = 2.87) and graduate degrees (M = 57.11, SD = 3.80). In terms of specialized educational preparation, practitioners with specialized ECE preparation (M = 57.30, SD = 3.43) had higher DAP scores than those without this preparation (M = 55.65, SD = 5.91) on Factor II scores. In the final analysis, there was a significant effect of highest degree (F(2,145) = 10.15, p < .001) on Factor III scores. Once again, early childhood professionals with graduate degrees expressed stronger DAP beliefs (M = 27.71, SD = 2.90) than professionals with bachelor’s degrees (M = 26.92, SD = 3.75) and with HS/GED/CDA/associate's degrees (M = 24.48, SD = 4.09). Means and standard deviations for each factor score are shown in Table 6. ANOVA results for factor total scores are shown in Table 7.

Table 6
Means and Standard Deviations for Factor Total Scores on TBS

Table 7
ANOVA Results for Factor Total Scores on TBS