Date of Award:

5-1996

Document Type:

Dissertation

Degree Name:

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department:

Human Development and Family Studies

Department name when degree awarded

Family and Human Development

Committee Chair(s)

Shelley L. Knudesen Lindauer

Committee

Shelley L. Knudesen Lindauer

Committee

Jay D. Schvaneveldt

Committee

Ann M. Berghout Austin

Committee

Donald V. Sisson

Committee

Deborah A. Byrnes

Abstract

The current study focused on examining the developmental stages of preschool teachers in the Arab Gulf region. Specifically, the needs and concerns of teachers were investigated using a pretest/posttest (12-month interval) design. Participants included two groups of preschool teachers, trained (n = 35) and untrained (n = 122)

Contrary to expectations, the sequential nature of development stages of teachers did not emerge. Instead, the results showed that teachers become less concerned about teaching as they progress in their careers.

When data from the present study were factor-analyzed they yielded only two areas of concerns that seemed applicable cross-cultrally. When data were subjected to analysis of variance, results revealed that training had a significant main effect on teaching concerns while teaching experience did not. Further exploration of the category experience showed that, for Factor II, the trained group of teachers had a larger drop in their level of teaching concerns than the untrained group. This was especially evident with two subgroups, low (1 to 3) years of teaching experience and high (8 to 16) years of teaching experience. The trained group with medium (4 to 7) years of teaching experience maintained a consistently low score on both pretest and posttest. Teaching experience for Factor II appears to have a main effect in reducing the level of concerns of teachers over their teaching. This was especially evident between pretest and posttest for the low- and high-experience trained teachers.

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