As early childhood is a critical period with rapid increases of physical, socio-emotional, cognitive development, the attempts to promote the developments and maximize the effectiveness of education through environmental stimulus are required. Also, t...
As early childhood is a critical period with rapid increases of physical, socio-emotional, cognitive development, the attempts to promote the developments and maximize the effectiveness of education through environmental stimulus are required. Also, the quality of teachers, which takes significant role in the effectiveness of early child education, becomes an important factor to determine the success or failure of early child education. In addition, among the factors to affect the educational activities of teachers, commitment to teaching occupation has very significant implication. Therefore, exploring the factors to affect the commitment to teaching occupation and applying it to prepare the support plans for the influences on positive changes of educational administration of kindergarten is necessitated.
The factor to affect teacher’s commitment into teaching occupation in kindergarten can be regarded as the role of kindergarten director who leads the kindergarten. As revealed in previous studies, the leadership of kindergarten director represented as the competence of director gives influences on the levels of teacher’s commitment to teaching occupation directly and indirectly. Although the leadership of director in kindergarten is important, the studies on the influences of kindergarten director per leadership types on the commitment to teaching occupation have been relatively insufficient compared to the studies targeting other school levels. Therefore, this study attempts to compare and analyze the influences per leadership types on the commitment to teaching occupation by setting transformational, emotional, transactional leadership of kindergarten director as independent variables at the same time. The research questions settled for this purpose are as follows.
First, how are the levels of transformational, emotional, transactional leadership of kindergarten director perceived by kindergarten teachers?
Second, how are the levels of the commitment into teaching occupation perceived by kindergarten teachers?
Third, how transformational, emotional, transactional leadership of kindergarten director affects the teacher’s commitment into teaching occupation?
To solve the research questions of this study, the tools for leadership measurement and the commitment to teaching occupation measurement which were verified in the previous studies were utilized to conduct survey. Among the private kindergartens located in the three metropolitan areas of Seoul, Incheon, Gyeonggi-do, 60 kindergartens were randomly sampled per areas. Total 180 kindergartens were selected. After counting the class number in the selected kindergartens, the questionnaires were sent by e-mail and the survey was performed targeting total 1,086 teachers in charge. Among the collected 882 questionnaires, 877 questionnaires were utilized for the analysis. 5 questionnaires were excluded because 3 questionnaires had insincere answers and 2 questionnaires of male teachers could not affect the results. The data was analyzed by SPSS 18.0 statistics program. The methodologies of difference analysis and regression analysis were used.
The results from this study based on the analysis can be summarized as follows.
First, in the levels of transformational, emotional, transactional leadership of kindergarten director perceived by kindergarten teacher, the transformational leadership was revealed as 3.63 on a 5-point scale. The average value of emotional leadership was 3.80, and that of transactional leadership was 3.02. It was found that emotional leadership was most highly perceived. In addition, in the perception differences among leadership types according to the variables of background, transformational and emotional leadership showed significant differences among groups in terms of the size of kindergarten and the fact whether director majored in early children education. Transformational and emotional leadership was most highly perceived by the kindergarten teachers who worked in the over-middle-sized classes (4~6 classes, 7~10 classes, more than 11 classes) than small-sized classes (1~3 classes). It was also found that transformational and emotional leadership was mostly highly perceived by the kindergarten teachers whose director majored in early children education. Regarding transactional leadership, the teachers working in Seoul made higher perception than the teachers working in Incheon and Gyeonggi-do. The teachers working in 4-6 classes and more than 11 classes made higher perception than the teachers working in 7-10 classes. The teachers whose director did not major in early children education made higher perception as well.
Second, the level of the commitment in teaching occupation of kindergarten teachers showed 3.83 in a 5-point scale. In the difference analysis on the kindergarten teachers’ perception on the commitment in teaching occupation, the variables to show significant differences among groups were age, working experience, academic background, kindergarten size and the director majoring in early children education. As the teachers’ age, working experience, academic background is higher, the teachers’ perception on the commitment to teaching occupation was found to be higher. It was also found that the perception on the commitment to teaching occupation was higher in the over-middle-sized classes (1-3 classes) than small-sized classes. (4-6 classes, 7-10 classes, more than 11 classes). The perception on the commitment to teaching occupation was higher for the teachers whose directors majored in early children education. In addition, regarding leadership types, the perception on the commitment to teaching occupation was found to be higher as the perception on unite promotion among the sub-variables of transformational leadership and relationship management among the sub-variables of emotional leadership is higher.
Third, according to the regression analysis to explore the effects of director’s leadership type on teachers’ commitment to teaching occupation, the perception on the commitment to teaching occupation was higher as transformational leadership and emotional leadership was higher. Transactional leadership was found to have no significant effects. Thus, in order to enhance teachers’ commitment to teaching occupation that directly gives influence on the positive changes of educational administration of kindergarten and educational quality, it is needed to demonstrate emotional leadership and transformational leadership in harmonious and balanced ways. In addition, it was found that working experience and academic background as the variable of affecting the commitment to teaching occupation gave positive influences on the commitment to teaching occupation when they were higher. Therefore, stimulating the needs for learning and providing opportunities is required in order to foster the environmental condition in which working career of teachers is not disrupted and continuously maintained and academic background of teachers can be improved.
Several limitations of this study are as follows. First, the findings can vary when targeting the teachers in other regions with different social and cultural circumstances, since this study conducted the survey targeting the kindergarten located in Seoul, Incheon, Gyeonggi-do. Second, because the research variables were measured only by the reactions on the perceptions of teacher groups when measuring the levels of the commitment to teaching occupation, the follow-up studies should examine the utilization of measurement tool to accurately comprehend the levels of the commitment of teaching occupation. Third, although there can be a variety of leaderships to affect the commitment to teaching occupation, this study has the limitation of only setting transactional, transformational, emotional leaderships as the independent variables. Therefore, the studies on various leadership of kindergarten director that affects the commitment of teaching occupation should be performed in the future.