유치원 교사의 교육신념과 유아의 인지능력과의 관계연구

Abstract

It is meaningful to explore the effect of teacher’s educational beliefs on cognitive abilities of young children because knowing what the proper educational belief for developing young children’s cognitive abilities can be the first step of early education. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of teacher’s educational beliefs on developing young children’s cognitive abilities. In order to achieve the research goals, the following research question was established: Is there any difference in the educational belief among teachers? Questionnaires were distributed to 20 teachers in S City area to collect the data. Out of 20 teachers, only 8 teachers have distinctive educational beliefs. Among them 3 teachers turned out to be maturational belief, 3 teachers mutual belief, and 2 teachers behavioral beliefs. To find out differences in cognitive abilities between young children who have been cared by teacher having different educational belief, the K-ABC test was performed for 68 children who have been cared by 8 teachers mentioned above. The data were analyzed using SPSS/Win 11.5. The results from analysis are as follows: First, there is meaningful difference in cognitive abilities according to teacher's educational belief. The maturism group shows the highest score in K-ABC, and behaviorism group shows the lowest score in general (p<0.05). Second, the general difference is not always consistent through every subtest constitutes K-ABC. Especially in Math and Vocabulary there are no significant difference between groups. And the score of math test of behaviorism group is even higher than other two groups. As a result, it can be concluded that it is not wise to stick to just one educational belief every time. Teachers are needed to change their educational beliefs according to the activity which is aimed to develop certain aspect of cognitive abilities of young children.