Preschool teachers' awareness and views of children's self-regulation scales: A professional development program's effect

Abstract

There has been increased evidence about the importance of supporting children's self-regulation skills in early childhood and the role of teachers in this process. This current research consisted of two studies. Study 1 aimed to develop two scales: one to assess preschool teachers' awareness of children's self-regulation and the other to determine their views of children's self-regulation skills. To examine the scales' construct validity, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA- n = 201) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA- n = 123) were conducted for both the awareness and views scales. EFA yielded two subscales for the awareness scale: self-regulation (7 items- ω = .81) and relation to learning (3 items- ω = .76). CFA results showed that the awareness scale's 10-item and two-factor structure had good fit indices. A single factor emerged in EFA results for the teachers' views of children's self-regulation skills scale (8 items- Cronbach's α = .92). CFA results demonstrated that the views scale's 8-item and single factor structure exhibited good fit indices. Based on the results, these two scales can be utilized validly and reliably to determine teachers' cognizance of self-regulation and opinions about children's self-regulation. Using these two scales in a pretest-posttest design, study 2 examined a professional development program's effect on preschool teachers' (n = 21) awareness and views about children's self-regulation. The Wilcoxon Signed Rank Test was utilized to analyze the data. The results showed a statistically significant difference between the participant teachers' pretest and posttest awareness and views scores on children's self-regulation. Implications for future research and teacher professional development programs were discussed.

Keywords

• Preschool teachers’ awareness and views
• Self-regulation skills
• Professional development

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