Difficulty in Understanding of Children by Novice Childcare Teachers

Abstract

This study aimed to clarify in what situations novice childcare teachers feel difficulty in understanding children. Three novice teachers were interviewed about situations in which they felt difficulty in understanding children. The narrative data were qualitatively examined by thematic analysis and the Trajectory Equifinality Model in the Three Layers Model of Genesis. The result identified the following three situations in which the difficulty arose: 1) superficial judgment, 2) inaccurate understanding, and 3) conflict between individual children and a group. It was also found that not only negative perception, but also even positive perception of children can cause the difficulty, and that various factors such as factors within dyadic, children/group-related factors, factors specific to novice teachers, and individual factors related to each teacher’s thought may affect how teachers understand children teacher’s efforts toward improving mutual understanding with children influenced his/her emotion, suggesting that the difficulty is not simply a confusion in understanding.