The purpose of this study was to investigate and analyze the level of kindergarten teacher's recognition for health and safety and the actual conditions of the safety environment of education centers and how connected the amount of health and safety r...
The purpose of this study was to investigate and analyze the level of kindergarten teacher's recognition for health and safety and the actual conditions of the safety environment of education centers and how connected the amount of health and safety recognition is to the actual safety environment in central K City. To accomplish the purpose of this study, I choose to focus on the following questions:
1. What is the level of teachers' recognition about young children's health?
1-1. What are the differences of teacher's recognition of young children's health according to different factors (teaching career, school background, type of center).
1-2. What are the differences of teacher's recognition of young children's health according to participation in teachers' safety training and study programs.
2. What is the level of teacher's recognition about young children's safety?
2-1. What are the differences of teacher's recognition of young children's safety according to different factors (teaching career, school background, type of center).
2-2. What are the differences of teacher's recognition of young children's safety according to participation in teacher's safety training and study programs.
3. What are the differences in the safety environment according to young children's education centers?
4. What is connection between teacher's recognition of health and safety and an center's safety environment?
4-1. What is the connection between a teacher's recognition about health and the safety environment?
4-2. What is the connection between a teacher's recognition about safety and the safety environment?
To investigate these questions, I distributed a questionnaire about recognition of health and safety to the subjects - 30 teachers each at a public kindergarten, private kindergarten, national or public, nursery, and private nursery in K City, for a total of 120 teachers. After distributing the questionnaires, I then gathered them for analysis.
The safety environments of young children's education centers were evaluated by a researcher and assistants. They directly visited 72 young children centers, 18 of each type (public kindergarten, private kindergarten, national or public, nursery, and private nursery). The analysis of the collected materials used the SPSS 11.0 program, and the 87 questions from the questionnaires about health and safety were given a score from 1 to 5, and then utilized the analysis of variance and verified according to Tukey and Scheffe verification for later analysis. The 3 questions about emergency treatment were analyzed using χ² verification and Correlation Analysis to find out the connection between health and safety understanding and the safety environment.
The summary of the results of this study is as follows:
First, recognition of young children's health among teachers is mostly high, and it has a statistical difference in the sphere of health management, which was low, and in the recognition of teachers by center type. Teachers who worked at private kindergartens had the highest level of recognition about the area of health management. Also, only 42.9% of the subjects responded on their questionnaires that they knew how to perform CardioPulmonary Resuscitation (CPR). This also showed a difference according to careers and school background. Further, this means there is a statistically mutual connection between participation in safety study and training programs and the result of an examination about the teacher's CPR ability, emergency treatment ability according to accident types, and understanding about exact knowledge and techniques which are needed for emergency treatment.
Second, the safety recognition of teacher's for young children was mostly high, however there was a low statistical difference according to teaching career in the safety management sphere. There was no mean difference amongst groups according to school background or type of centers.
Third, as for the results of comparing the low spheres about differences of safety environment according to early childhood centers, there was a statistical difference in the sphere of the indoor environment, and the order was, from top to bottom, private kindergarten, public kindergarten, private nursery, and national or public, nursery.
Fourth, the scores about health and safety recognition of teachers for young children were comparatively high, but the scores about safety environment was low, therefore we discovered that there is a difference between teacher's recognition of young children and the actual environment. However, there is high mean relative relation between the sphere of contagious disease management, which is a low sphere of health recognition, and the sphere of normal environment. Also, it had high mean relation between the feeding facilities, which was a low sphere of safety recognition, to the recognition of other facilities and the normal classroom environment.
According to the results of this study, we need to construct safety education study and training for teachers for young children, because those kinds of programs are connected with overall knowledge and periodic practice about health and safety. Teachers need to be made to realize the importance about safety management and improve their ability to handle situations when accidents occur. Also, colleges for training teachers for young children inspect about young children safety education need to create a plan or plans which can establish more exact and full knowledge and attitudes. Early Childhood centers need the government's legal and systematic support, financial support, and regular inspections to offer a safer environment in their centers.