Teachers’ perceptions of their personal early childhood special education competence in day care

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine and compare kindergarten and special kindergarten teachers’ perceptions of their own competence in early childhood special education (ECSE) in Finnish day care. This comparison is based on the kindergarten teachers’ and special kindergarten teachers’ self-evaluation. Teachers evaluated their theoretical and practical ECSE competence. The research questionnaire consisted of six ECSE working areas. The aim of this study is to integrate theory and practice, and participation in expert culture by bringing educational research and practical education closer to each other. The results reported here imply that the respondents evaluate their theoretical and practical ECSE competence to be better than moderate; the test reliability was quite high. Special kindergarten teachers assess their knowledge competence more highly than kindergarten teachers. Teachers ranked their practical competence higher than their theoretical competence.

Keywords:

• theoretical and practical competence
• early childhood special education
• day care
• special needs
• kindergarten teacher
• special kindergarten teacher

Acknowledgements

This study was funded by the Elsa Borenius and Elisabeth Alander fund (31.1.2003), Kindergarten Teachers as a part of The Trade Union of Education in Finland. The authors wish to thank the funders and all the respondents whose contributions made this study possible.

Notes

1. Webropol is an online solution for conducting surveys, gathering data, managing feedback and reporting data.