This study is to develop the group counseling program for improving the early childhood teachers' multicultural education competency and to examine to what degree the program affected the early childhood teachers' multicultural attitude and efficacy. ...
This study is to develop the group counseling program for improving the early childhood teachers' multicultural education competency and to examine to what degree the program affected the early childhood teachers' multicultural attitude and efficacy. For this goal, the subjects of study set in this thesis are as follow:
1. What constitutes the group counseling program for improving the early childhood teachers' multicultural education competency?
1-1. What's the goal of the group counseling program for improving the early childhood teachers' multicultural education competency?
1-2. What is contained in the group counseling program for improving the early childhood teachers' multicultural education competency?
1-3. How the group counseling program for improving the early childhood teachers' multicultural education competency is operated?
2. Do the group counseling program for improving the early childhood teachers' multicultural education competency affect the early childhood teacher's multicultural attitude and efficacy?
2-1. Do the group counseling program for improving the early childhood teachers' multicultural education competency affect the early childhood teacher's multicultural attitude?
2-2. Does the group counseling program for improving the early childhood teachers' multicultural education competency affect the early childhood teacher's efficacy?
To solve the subjects of study, this study developed the program through a prerequisite study, a program analysis, a demand inquiry, an professional advisory committee, the establishment of objects and goal of the program, a preliminary experiment, the revision and complement of the program.
The objects of the group counseling program for improving the early childhood teachers' multicultural education competency are focused on enhancing the early childhood teachers' cultural competency for multicultural education, promoting their acquisition of multicultural knowledge, developing their attitudes, forming their skills, and building up their multicultural efficacy. The program is made up of three areas, which are knowledge acquisition, attitude development, and skill formation. The knowledge area is constituted of learning about cultures and understanding their diversity, and the attitude area is constituted of identity development, bias recognition, and equality shaping, and the skill area is constituted of relationship establishment and multicultural education methods. The operating method of this program is the structured group counseling, which is done for 90 minutes a session and on 8-session closed groups. To examine the effect of the group counseling program for improving the early childhood teachers' multicultural education competency, this program was done on the experiment group of 8 voluntary participants from the same nursery and on the comparison group of 8 other members. The verification of the program effects was made by comparing between the pre- and post-examination scores of multicultural attitudes and efficacy and using the descriptions of the session impressions, the reflective writing, and the follow-up counseling content.
After applying the group counseling program for improving the early childhood teachers' multicultural education competency, this program proved to meaningfully enhance the early childhood teachers' self-identity and social identity, bias recognition, multicultural attitudes toward equality value formation. Also, this program meaningfully affected the early childhood teachers' multicultural efficacy. Through the experiences of every session, the group members recognized the significance of culture difference, started to think rationally, and showed the confidence of actively trying to understand about the infants.
This study enhanced the early childhood teachers' multicultural attitudes and efficacy by applying the group counseling method. The application of this program is expected to build up the early childhood teachers' cultural competency and substantially contribute to the multicultural education of infants.