A survey study of Chinese kindergarten teacher concerns

The purpose of this survey study was to identify some major concerns of Chinese kindergarten teachers at different points in their careers, based on the conceptual framework of Katz's (1972, 1977, 1985) theory of preschool teacher development, and to describe the variations in these concerns in terms of the following teacher characteristics: (a) teaching experience, (b) certification, (c) educational background, (d) inservice training, and (e) teaching assignment.Three hundred and fifty Chinese kindergarten teachers in Taiwan constituted the sample in this study. The professional concerns of the teachers were expressed through a questionnaire which contained the following two parts: (a) Background Information, and (b) Kindergarten Teacher Concerns Rating Scale (KTCRS) which consisted of 54 items reflecting the four areas of concerns--Survival, Consolidation, Renewal, and Maturity--formulated by Katz. The KTCRS was based on Arroyo and Sugawara's (1983) Scale of Student Teaching Concerns (SSTC), literature review, expert validation, and a pilot study. A Likert type 5-point scale indicating the degree of concerns was used in the questionnaire as the scoring system.The results revealed the following: (1) A developmental pattern in the teacher concerns was detected, which tended to follow through a sequence of stages as posited by Katz. (2) Significant differences were found among different groups in terms of teaching experience, certification, educational background, inservice training, and teaching assignment. However, there were no significant differences across the four areas of concern within the groups with teaching experience of 3 to 5 years, 5 to 10 years, and 10 to 15 years.The findings implied that preservice and inservice education should be based on teacher concerns. The recommendations for future research included (a) replicating the study with larger samples and different samples from other cultures, and (b) studying the relation of teacher concerns to personal characteristics and life experiences of the teacher.U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio