[[alternative]]The Professional Development of Preschool Directors and its Correlates

[[abstract]]The purpose of this research was to explore preschool director’s professional development and to understand what factors affected their development and how. The methods of qualitative research have been used to develop a detailed picture of the preschool director’s process of the professional growth and development and to find out its correlates. The subjects included three private preschool directors with six years of managerial experience in Taipei. The major findings are as follows: 1.Each director had her own experience. According to the things they faced, the situation of their preschools, and the main point of their works, their professional development were different. 2.We can divide subjects’ professional development into three levels. Currently Mrs. Yi is coming to the master level and Mrs. Hua and Mrs. An are at the competent level. Although the results and the processes of three director’s professional development are so different, we still can find out that the characters of their development are similar. 3.Four factors were found to affect all three subjects’ professional development, although in different ways and to different extents, including: economic and survival of the organization, supervisor’s demands toward profit, family support, and directors’ educational beliefs. 4.Five factors were found to cause different professional development in the subjects, including: director’s reflective ability, appropriate self-confidence, vision, economic pressure, and multiple roles. These factors interacted whit each other, and the way they interacted were different for each subject, and subsequently resulted in different processes and stages of professional development. The findings and their implications were discussed, and future research directions were also suggested.