Preschool is an institution for cultural preservation, which responds to social change. Guided by this assumption, this study used a recent video of Chinese preschool in conjunction with the questionnaire from Preschool in Three Cultures, a study by Joseph Tobin and his colleagues in the 1980s, to examine the cultural and professional beliefs of three groups of U.S. early childhood educators (preservice, inservice non-Head Start, and inservice Head Start). We examined participants’ cultural beliefs, critical comments on the preschool, and group differences in their comments. Results show that participants’ beliefs about necessary qualities for a teacher remained stable from the 1980s in the U.S. But a shift occurred in beliefs about why society needs preschools. More education and longer employment were linked significantly to more critical comments of Chinese practice. There was a marked difference in professional and cultural beliefs by educators’ group affiliations.
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Notes
Please contact the first author for more information about the video, A Day at Little Stars.
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Acknowledgments
This research was supported in part by the 2001 Faculty Research Grant, University of Memphis. Participating early childhood educators from the city of Memphis, Tennessee, generously shared their views. Jack Ronai and Guoqing Wei helped with data collection and data entry. Katherine Kitzmann made helpful comments on a draft.
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Hsueh, Y., Barton, B.K. A Cultural Perspective on Professional Beliefs of Childcare Teachers. Early Childhood Educ J 33, 179–186 (2005). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-005-0042-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-005-0042-2