Investigating Preschoolers' Self-Care Behaviors: Teacher and Parent Reports

2022-9-21
Altaş, Elif Naz
The purpose of the study was to investigate and compare teachers’ and parents’ beliefs about children’s self-care behaviors considering child (age, gender, having sibling), parent (socioeconomic status) and teacher-related (teaching experience) characteristics and to investigate and compare the beliefs about the self-care implementations. Explanatory mixed-methods design was used. The data was gathered from 208 early-childhood educators in nine central districts of Ankara and 531 parents whose children were educated in these teachers' classrooms. Quantitative data were collected with the “The Beliefs on Young Children’s Self Care Behaviors Survey” and “demographic information form”. Then, semi-structured interviews were done with 10 preschool teachers and 11 parents on a voluntary basis. According to results of the study, teachers believed the development of self-care behaviors as children grow, despite no dramatic changes in their observations according to age. The parents also had similar beliefs, and their observations about the certain behaviors changed. Considering children’s gender, the participants believed girls having better self-care skills, despite no dramatic differences in their observations. Considering the “having sibling”, parents’ observations differed in certain behaviors unlike teachers’ observations. Participants believed positive impact of having sibling on self-care. Moreover, as considering SES, teachers’ observations did not change according to SES unlike parents’ observations. Participants had different beliefs about the effect of SES on self-care. Besides, according to teaching experience, the observation of “self-protection from accidents” behaviors increased systematically. Additionally, some problems were encountered in self-care implementations. The participants’ belief about the factors negatively effecting the implementations were similar.

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Citation Formats
E. N. Altaş, “Investigating Preschoolers’ Self-Care Behaviors: Teacher and Parent Reports,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2022.