The main purpose of this study was to investigate the organization cultures of the early childhood institutions and the empowerment of the teachers working in the institutions. 220 early childhood teachers (110 kindergarten and 110 day care teachers) ...
The main purpose of this study was to investigate the organization cultures of the early childhood institutions and the empowerment of the teachers working in the institutions. 220 early childhood teachers (110 kindergarten and 110 day care teachers) in the D city of south-eastern area in Korea were investigated through the questionnaires, which contained both the questionnaire on the organizational culture of early childhood institutions and the questionnaire of the teacher empowerment in the early childhood institutions. The questionnaires, the former adapted based on Lee(1997) and the latter, on Lim(2001), were distributed to the teachers who were asked to answer the questions. The data from the questionnaires were analyzed by the ANOVA and correlational analysis with SPSS 12 program.
The results of this study were as follows:
First, in the organizational culture of the institutions perceived by the teachers, the innovational culture showed a meaningful difference between teacher's careers, which meant that the experienced teachers responded higher than the novice teachers. In the analysis according to the type of the institutions, day care center teachers perceived the hierarchy culture higher than the kindergarten teachers.
Second, in the empowerment perceived by the teachers, this study showed that the experienced teachers perceived highly all the fields of the empowerments and the day care center teachers were higher in the decision-making factor than the kindergarten teachers.
Third, this study showed that there was a correlational relationship between the empowerment of the teachers and the organizational culture of the institutions perceived by the teachers. Specifically, the higher the innovational culture, the group culture, and the rational culture were, the greater the teachers perceived the empowerment. The higher the hierarchy culture was, however, the lower the empowerment of the teachers was.
In conclusion, this study revealed that first, there was a meaningful correlation between the organizational culture of the early childhood education institutions and the empowerment perceived by the teachers; second, the higher experienced teachers' career was, the greater the teachers perceived the empowerment; third, as for the difference according to the types of the early childhood education institutions, there was no meaningful correlation in all factors.
From these conclusions, it desires to elevate the empowerment of the teacher so that the institutions make it high the innovational culture, the group culture, and the rational culture and make the hierarchy culture low. In addition, it should be recognized fully the value of the experienced teachers, and the early childhood educational programs, teaching methods, the participations in various activities in order to allow teacher's autonomy of the Above all, a lot of supports including treatmen of the teachers as an expert are important; therefore, development of the team-work between the teachers and creative teaching methods are necessary for them to be the experienced teachers in the field of early childhood education.