Greek pre-service kindergarten teachers’ beliefs about and practices of developmentally appropriate practices in early childhood education

Abstract

The continuum of beliefs reported by Greek pre-service kindergarten teachers and how those beliefs relate to classroom practices are explored in this article. Considering the potentially important influence of teachers’ beliefs on their practices, the level of early childhood teachers’ beliefs about developmentally appropriate practices (DAPs) and the relationship between their beliefs and practices are regarded as important topics of study in early childhood education. This study was designed in order to investigate Greek pre-service kindergarten teachers’ self-reported beliefs and practices related to the National Association for the Education of Young Children’s policy statement for DAP. Research results indicated that participants favour DAP both as far as their beliefs and the instructional activities they implement are concerned. Even though the analysis indicated correlations among DAP and developmentally inappropriate practice (DIP) beliefs and practices, beliefs have not been found to predict practices.

Keywords:

• pre-service kindergarten teachers
• beliefs
• practices
• developmentally appropriate practice (DAP)
• developmentally inappropriate practice (DIP)
• National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC)
• teacher beliefs and practices survey: three- to five-year-olds