Under the goal of investigating a conflict process between early childhood teachers and parents, this study set out to promote the in-depth understanding of conflicts between early childhood teachers and parents and devise practical alternatives for c...
Under the goal of investigating a conflict process between early childhood teachers and parents, this study set out to promote the in-depth understanding of conflicts between early childhood teachers and parents and devise practical alternatives for conflict prevention and coping in the field of kindergartens. The study set the following research questions: First, how do conflicts begin between early childhood teachers and parents? Second, how do conflicts develop between early childhood teachers and parents? Third, how do conflicts end between early childhood teachers and parents?
As for methodology, the investigator applied the ground theory method by Strauss & Corbin(2001) to 100 cases of teachers that had conflict experiences with parents at 27 private kindergartens in Busan to analyze a conflict process between early childhood teachers and parents. The 100 cases collected were analyzed according to the beginning, development, and ending stage of conflicts between early childhood teachers and parents through the open, axial, and selective coding processes, which are the three processes of the ground theory.
The findings were summarized as follows: Firstly, conflicts between early childhood teachers and parents began with the communication of disagreeing perspectives between them. Early childhood teachers perceived problematic behaviors of young children including basic life habits, safety accidents, maladjustment to kindergarten, health and disability issues, and disposition issues and also and tendencies of parents including excessive worries, overprotection, and indifference as problems. Secondly, teachers took a passive attitude and chose the conflict resolution method of affirmation and negation in the development stage of conflicts between early childhood teachers and parents. As there were no preparations for the resolution of conflicts among kindergarten, teachers, and parents, early childhood teachers consumed with worries over conflict resolution took a passive attitude and thus chose the conflict resolution method of affirmation and negation. Finally, the ending stage of conflicts between early childhood teachers and parents involved conflict resolution and potential conflicts. Conflict resolution involved changes both to home and kindergarten including positive changes to perceptions such as changes to the parents' child rearing attitudes and teachers' rewarding conflicts, efforts to develop and change professionalism, improvements of kindergarten environment and operation, and improvement of young children's problematic behaviors.