Educators' beliefs and values about child rearing and education

Abstract

Investigating the values and beliefs teachers possess about child rearing and education might be the first step to understand why children are educated in some settings and not others, why the settings are established in the ways they are, why teachers encourage some activities and discourage others. The aim of this study is to determine the relation between teachers' beliefs and values about child rearing, education and some socio-demographic variables. The sample consists of 447 early childhood and elementary education pre-service and in-service teachers. Polarity Scale (Tomkins, 1978, 1987), Schwartz Value Scale (Schwartz, 1994), and Parental Modernity Scale (Shaefer ve Edgerton, 1985) is applied to gather data. Results demonstrate significant relation between conformism, power, humanism and traditional-modern child rearing beliefs and values. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved