Attitudes of Dutch and German preschool teachers towards professional childcare A cultural comparison

• Published in: Early years (London, England) Vol. 29; no. 3; pp. 249 - 260
• Main Authors: König, Anke, Aalsvoort, Geerdina van der
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: German; English
• Published: Routledge 01.10.2009
• Subjects: Child Care; Child Development; Class Activities; Cognitive Development; Comparative Analysis; Cross Cultural Studies; Cultural Differences; Developmental Stages; Educational Environment; Emotional Development; Frühpädagogik; German; Germany; Japan; Kindertagesstätte; Learning Activities; Measures (Individuals); Netherlands; Physical Development; preschool; Preschool Teachers; professionalism; Professionalität; Questionnaires; Social Development; teacher; Teacher Attitudes; Teacher Education; Teacher Role; Teaching Methods; Vergleichende Erziehungswissenschaft; Video Technology; Vorschule; Netherlands; Japan; Germany
• ISSN: 0957-5146; 1472-4421
• DOI: 10.1080/09575140903253151

This study explores educators' reflections on professional childcare practice in different national contexts. The data were collected by showing video clips of classroom activities in Japanese, Dutch and German pre-schools to experienced German and Dutch pre-school teachers. The clips were used to elicit their opinions on playing and learning in educational settings through a standardized questionnaire completed immediately after viewing each clip. The participants were also invited to rate the strength of cognitive, social, physical and emotional developmental domains during the activity. These data were analysed by classifying the questionnaire responses into four categories: remarks related to teachers, to children, to peers and to context. The frequencies of the categories and the ratings of developmental domains were computed and compared by t-tests between the German and the Dutch sample. The findings revealed that pre-school teachers offered more elaborated perspectives on the content of the foreign video clips than on the clips from their own country. There were also some differences with regard to developmental domains. With regard to pre-school teacher training it was concluded that the teachers' knowledge base should be used as an input for their professional practice. (übernommen).