The Relationship Between Pre-K Teacher's Attributes and Practices and Child-Care Structural Quality

Introduction: Research has shown that an array of teachers’ attributes influences their instructional strategies and their approach to interacting with children (Burchinal et al., 2010). Despite the importance of teachers to children’s early child care experience, there is a considerable gap in our knowledge and understanding of essential teacher characteristics other than teacher qualification or observed classroom practices. It is important to understand teachers’ own beliefs and perspectives on their teaching attributes and practices. However, there is no comprehensive measure of the key attributes preschool teachers bring to the classroom, a measurement gap which may contribute to the lack of studies on teacher characteristics and their impact on child outcomes. The purpose of this study was to test the psychometric properties of a newly developed teacher-reported measure, the Comprehensive Teacher Attributes and Practices Scale-PreK (CTAPS-PreK) and to examine the associations between child-care structural quality and the CTAPS-PreK subscales.

Methods: A sample of 103 preschool teachers responded to 36 questions asking self-perceived attributes and practices in early child-care settings, answering each using a 5-point scale (1 = Not at all like me, 5 = A lot like me). Child-care structural quality was represented by a quality rating level (1, 2, or 3) from a Quality Rating and Improvement System that accounts for teachers’ qualification and training, teacher-to-child ratio, curriculum, and working conditions.

Results: Exploratory factor analyses revealed 10 factors in four domains of the CTAPS-PreK: social/emotional support and positive climate in Emotional Security; reflective practice, inquiry, and differentiation in Instructional Support; help-seeking and coping in Professional Practice; and pedagogical efficacy, literacy efficacy, and math/science efficacy in Efficacy. The subscales showed an acceptable range of internal reliability and construct validity. Furthermore, multilevel analyses revealed that teachers in child-care programs with higher structural quality reported more positive teaching attributes and practices than teachers in lower-quality child-care programs.

Conclusions: As this is the first study establishing the psychometric properties of the CTAPS-PreK scale, future exploration is needed to confirm our factor structure using a more diverse and larger sample. This study demonstrated that the CTAPS-PreK has potential uses, including providing information for teacher-related interventions and improving quality of teachers’ practices. In addition, the CTAPS-PreK could be used as a self-reflection tool for teachers to track their progress.