Child-centred educational practice in different early education settings: Associations with professionals’ attitudes, self-efficacy, and professional background
Development of a self-report questionnaire to assess child-centred educational practice and related teacher beliefs (i.e., self-efficacy and attitudes). Reliability and factorial validity of the scales were demonstrated. Professionals’ self-efficacy was a stronger predictor of educational practice than attitudes. Family daycare providers reported lower self-efficacy and less frequent child-centred practices than professional caregivers in daycare centres. Self-efficacy mediated the effect of domain-specific knowledge and education setting on child-centred educational practice. The study suggested that improving domain specific knowledge may have an impact on educators’ child-centred educational practice by increasing their self-efficacy.