In Japan, to discuss the development of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) teacher’s career, several researchers often focus on college students of an ECEC teacher training course, which is the first stage of... [ view full abstract ]
In Japan, to discuss the development of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) teacher’s career, several researchers often focus on college students of an ECEC teacher training course, which is the first stage of long-term career education. In our research, we conducted a survey by circulating a questionnaire among Japanese students of a college of the ECEC teacher training course. We studied a student’s growth psychologically called “ECEC teacher’s identity” (Koizumi & Tazume, 2005). This paper summarizes and reports the results of our researches.
Following the theory of identity in adolescents (e.g., Erikson, 1959; Okubo, 2000), we defined the achievement of ECEC teacher's identity operationally. These are acquisition of model of ECEC teacher and development of competence of ECEC teacher's skill.
The positive features of ECEC teacher’s identity attract students; they feel a stronger desire to further develop their childcare skills, participate in the same with a clear professional image, and evaluate their own practice efforts significantly (Tazume & Koizumi, 2006)..
Achievement of ECEC teacher’s identity through on-site ECEC trainings: acknowledging the leadership of their mentors and high challenge-oriented vocational motives may lead to acquisition of models of ECEC teachers. On the contrary, a feeling that their mentor is stern and highly anxious of their scant common social knowledge leads to waning competence as an ECEC teacher. The students of identity achievement had positive impression of their mentors, and the anxiety of their lack of common social skills was low (Tazume, 2012; Tazume & Koizumi, 2012).
Furthermore, we analyzed the relation between ECEC teacher’s identity, some psychological indexes (e.g., efficacy and mentalization), and vocational motives (Tazume & Hirose, 2016; Tazume, Hirose, & Masuda, 2016).
