Development of a Pre-school Teacher Support Program to Enhance the Efficacy of Encouraging an Experience in Noticing

Abstract

This study aims to develop a program to support pre-school teachers by enhancing the efficacy of encouraging an experience in noticing, and examine the effectiveness of the scheme. We design the system to raise the sense of efficacy of noticing in the daily practice of childcare. The program works on the experience in noticing that takes the form of autobiographical memory of the preschool teacher. Yoshida and Nishiyama (2017) verified a strong sense of efficacy among preschool teachers who noticed and remembered an experience in childcare practice. Therefore, we examined whether or not such a support program would reinforce their efficacy by encouraging them to notice and look back on their educational episode, recapture it in a new framework, and retain the experience of the noticing as their autobiographical memory. As a result, the efficacy was significantly higher at the follow-up and the one-month after follow-up than before training. In addition, there was no significant difference between the follow-up and the one-month after follow-up, confirming the sustained effect of the support program. Furthermore, similar effects were observed for other related variables, confirming their effectiveness. Based on these results, we discussed future research issues.