Early childhood educators’ meta-cognitive knowledge of problem-solving strategies and quality of childcare curriculum implementation

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3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This study aims to explore the impact of early childhood educators’ meta-cognitive knowledge on the quality of their childcare curriculum implementation, and to gain insights regarding successful problem-solving strategies associated with early education and care. Early childhood educators’ implementation of general problem-solving strategies in real educational settings has not previously been studied, even though providing early education and care is a complicated ill-structured task requiring effective problem-solving strategies. The present study surveyed 166 South Korean early childhood educators regarding their meta-cognitive knowledge of five general problem-solving strategies (free production, analogy, step-by-step analysis, visualisation and combining) and childcare curriculum implementation. In general, strategic teachers provided high-quality childcare. Teachers preferred analogy most strongly among the five general problem-solving strategies, but step-by-step analysis was the most powerful predictor of quality of curriculum implementation. Among the five strategies, only three strategies (step-by-step analysis, free production and analogy) showed meaningful associations with quality of curriculum implementation.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)658-674
Number of pages17
JournalEducational Psychology
Volume36
Issue number4
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 20 Apr 2016

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2014 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Keywords

  • early childhood education and care
  • early childhood educators
  • general problem-solving strategies
  • meta-cognitive knowledge
  • quality of curriculum implementation

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