The purpose of this research is to understand preservice early childhood teachers' character and their recognition about character education for young children. To examine closely about this subject, two main research problems are built as follows.
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The purpose of this research is to understand preservice early childhood teachers' character and their recognition about character education for young children. To examine closely about this subject, two main research problems are built as follows.
research subject 1. What features do preservice early childhood teachers' personality characteristics have? And what difference do they have depending on their training period?
research subject 2. What features does preservice early childhood teachers' recognition about character education for young children have? And what difference does it have depending on their training period?
This study selected 230 preservice teachers who are majoring in early childhood education from some universities which are located in Jeollabuk-do. In detail, among three-year universities are chosen 70 students (from A Univ.) and 50 students (from B Univ.). And among four-year universities are chosen 40 students (from C Univ.) and 70 students (from D Univ.)
This study revised and used character evaluation test of Jeon Jaeseon(2010) as a character evaluation test. This test included positive self-concept and social relations as character categories.
This research used the questionnaire Park Gyeongok(2010) amended to make it fitted with preservice teachers called 'A study of preservice early childhood teachers' recognition about character education for young children'. It consists of questions which ask overall perception about character education for young children of preservice early childhood teachers.
Collected questionnaires are analyzed through coding operation using the program of SPSS 14.0. This study utilized some statistical methods. Specifically, in character self-assessment, this research calculated the average and the standard deviation and then performed t- test. In the case of the recognition about character education, After investigating frequency and percentage per questions, this study carried out difference verification, χ² about variable.
Here are the results of this study.
First, when it comes to early childhood teacher professionalism, it should be preceded to properly understand and evaluate about teachers' character. It is necessary to have valuation standard which would help teachers develop their whole personality in the direction of keeping a balance with professionalism as essential capability character research of early childhood teachers should have. There exists the keen necessity to develop studies for making unified appraisal and these efforts should lead to way in which the qualities of early childhood teachers would be improved.
Secondly, studies of standard courses for character education for young children are needed, which could be utilized widely in teacher education institutes. On the basis of the contents of standard courses, preservice teachers who complete the regular unified courses in a teacher education institutes need to fully understand the importance of character education for young children and educational method that is effective in the real spot of education so that they should successfully apply these things to character education for children.
Third, a variety of programs for character education for young children should be developed. Currently the field of character education are being emphasized in contemporary context. But in reality, hasn't been sure enough that a lot of practical efforts including studies, experiments and institutionalization are on progress. Therefore feeling the keenly necessity about making character education programs, according to children development age, we have to do everything helpful when preservice early childhood teachers go to the actual spot of education.
Finally, in terms of character education for young children, there comes up need to have teacher education regular and continuous because the role of teacher is very important. Especially, we have to make efforts that are in direction of making help preservice teachers internalize good character in mind. It would be quite a long term assignment that preservice teachers must do. Thus, follow-up studies to give original suggestions to make preservice young child teachers' character stronger should be carried out.