With China’s economy booming, more and more foreign capital has entered the Chinese market, it already created a deep impact towards the early childhood education. There were many international cooperative kindergartens with foreign investments esta...
With China’s economy booming, more and more foreign capital has entered the Chinese market, it already created a deep impact towards the early childhood education. There were many international cooperative kindergartens with foreign investments established for the past decade, and more coming in the future, they become one of the most preferable options for many parents in Chinese society. In order to meet the diverse needs of early childhood education, the multicultural education ability of early childhood teachers has gradually become a topic of social concern. Therefore, for the purpose of improving the multicultural education ability of preschool teachers, this article starts with the multicultural experiences and the multicultural sensibility of Chinese early childhood teachers and uses a questionnaire to explore the impact of those experiences and sensibility on educational capabilities for early childhood teachers. The research questions for this study are as follows.
Questions 1. Does the personal background of Chinese early childhood teachers affect their multicultural education ability?
Questions 2. Does the multicultural experiences of Chinese early childhood teachers affect their multicultural education competence ?
Questions 3. What is the relationship between the multicultural sensibility and multicultural education competence of Chinese early childhood teachers?
Questions 4. What is the relative influence of the multicultural sensibility of Chinese early childhood teacher on the competence of multicultural education?
With the purpose of understanding the multicultural experiences, multicultural sensibility and multicultural education competence of Chinese early childhood teachers, this article uses questionnaires from Kim Soo-Jin (2016), Kang Jong-Hoon (2015), Park Jeong-Hee (2014) as basic skeleton, modified in accordance with the actual situation in China, verified by one Doctor of early childhood education, one graduate student of early childhood education (Korean ethnicity) and two Chinese early childhood teachers. A preliminary survey of 20 Chinese early childhood teachers was conducted during September 1- September 6, 2019. From September 8th to October 1st , 2019, 232 questionnaires were collected through QQ and WeChat. After final screening 215 questionnaires were analyzed using Excel 2016 and SPSS 21.0. The research methods include descriptive statistics, t-test, one-way ANOVA, Pearson’s correlation and multiple regression analysis, the results of the study are as follows.
First of all, from the personal background of Chinese early childhood teachers, the multicultural education competence of male Chinese early childhood teachers is higher than that of female Chinese early childhood teachers. The older and higher education the stronger ability to multicultural education. In addition, Chinese early childhood teachers with 4-6 years or 11 years of experiences in early childhood education have a stronger multicultural education competence. The multicultural education ability of international kindergarten teachers is higher than teachers from more traditional kindergartens. Second, Chinese early childhood teachers who have multicultural related curriculum learning experience, multicultural child coaching experience and who have multicultural families among friends and relatives have stronger multicultural education capabilities. Moreover the greater number of foreign languages that Chinese early childhood teachers can communicate with daily basis, the stronger the ability of multicultural education. Finally, from the perspective of the correlation and influence of multicultural sensibility of Chinese early childhood teachers and multicultural education competence of Chinese early childhood teachers, there is no overall relationship between those two aspects. However from the analysis of their individual sub-factors, the stronger the respect of Chinese early childhood teachers for cultural differences, the deeper the understanding of multiculturalism.