Prospective early childhood educators’ meta-cognitive knowledge and teacher self-efficacy: exploring domain-specific associations

Abstract

The present study explored South Korean prospective early childhood educators’ situation-specific meta-cognitive knowledge about five problem-solving strategies, investigating whether situated strategic knowledge contributed to teacher self-efficacy domains. Overall, pre-service teachers with higher meta-cognitive knowledge were found to have higher teacher self-efficacy, but the strength of correlations differed according to types of strategies (free production, analogy, step-by-step analysis, visualisation and combining) and situations (interpersonal, practical, study). Through multiple regressions, meta-cognitive knowledge of the strategy-free production in practical situations emerged as the most powerful contributor to all teacher self-efficacy domains. With meta-cognitive knowledge of free production in practical situations as a domain-general predictor, each teacher self-efficacy domain was also found to involve a unique set of meta-cognitive features as contributors. The facets of the predictors imply that combinations of relevant strategic knowledge contribute to confidence in specific teaching domains.

Keywords:

• meta-cognitive knowledge
• teacher self-efficacy
• pre-service teachers
• South Korea