Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices in Reaching Children’s Varied Needs in Early Childhood Education Programs.
Abstract
Quite a lot of research investigations were carried out in Ethiopia to examine ECCE designs, provisions, and contributions. However, little research was done to understand how developmentally appropriate were the ECCE designs and provisions. This research piece attempted to fill in this gap by attempting to explore teachers’ beliefs and practices about reaching out for children’s varied needs in Early Childhood Education programs in Adama Town. A sequential exploratory mixed design was employed in which data were collected through unstructured interviews, observation, and document analysis from purposefully selected private, government, and faith-based early childhood education centres. The participants of the study were 9 early childhood care and education (ECCE) teachers purposefully selected from private, faith-based, and government preschools. Data collected from a sample of nine teachers through interviews, records, and observation field notes were transcribed, coded, categorised, and developed into themes within and across cases. Data from the quantitative strand employed a sample of 190 (45%) teachers from the three settings. The findings were presented under one overarching theme that revealed that children with special needs were minimally integrated into the ECCE settings. Also, the teachers had inadequate training and pedagogical skills to create inclusive ECCE settings for children with special needs. Moreover, environmental factors had a greater impact on their classroom practices than their beliefs. In discussions of their beliefs, the teachers mentioned various sources of barriers, such as limited knowledge and pedagogical skills, pre-service and in-service training, DAP curriculum, hands-on experience teaching materials, play equipment, suitable learning environment, budget, awareness about children with special needs and stakeholders’ collaboration, which affected their practices. Lastly, the implications of this study for the ECCE stakeholders were suggested.
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