2023 Volume 74 Issue 3 Pages 148-155
This study examined differences in perspectives on “understanding children,” i.e., the extent to which childcare workers pay attention to understanding children's feelings, based on their years of experience. Novices, mid-career, and experienced in service childcare workers (N = 115) watched two scenes in which children appeared in daily childcare settings. Then, the childcare workers freely described their feelings and reasons for the children's behaviors. We divided the childcare workers' descriptions into segments, categorized them according to perspectives on “understanding children,” and examined differences among the three types of experiences. The results indicated that the participants paid attention to details of children's behaviors and utterances and became able to verbalize these as their experience increased. Moreover, experienced workers, compared to novice or mid-career workers, more often “understood children” from the perspective of background, children's development and children's utterances and behaviors.
