Abstract:

A growing body of research, however, shows, high-quality Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), high-quality literacy education in kindergarten and highly-skilled kindergarten educators can compensate for educational disadvantages and ensure successful reading at school. In fact, it is proven that the quality of kindergartens is the key to social and educational benefits and success. However, it is only since the poor performances of German students in the PISA testing of 2000 that the German attitude towards kindergartens has changed: away from the childcare center towards the first educational institution. A debate arose about the professionalization of educators, and the quality of care since research uncovered that German kindergarten teachers were insufficiently qualified and specific areas, such as literacy education were inadequate as well. This automatically shifts the focus to the competences and beliefs of kindergarten teachers because in order to ensure a high-quality education, teachers must have expert knowledge and a positive attitude towards teaching. Therefore, this paper is going to examine teachers’ beliefs of German kindergarten educators on early literacy education by using study data from surveys of 36 kindergarten teachers. Teachers’ beliefs impact not only the classroom a lot but also the development of children and thereby their later school success since teacher select teaching methods and materials on basis of their ideas regarding e.g. teaching and learning goals. Results indicate that the majority of German kindergarten educators has a negative attitude regarding an early literacy education, which might be connected to a lack of knowledge as this paper will argue.

Keywords:

Kindergarten Teacher Beliefs, Early Literacy Education, Early Childhood Education, Teacher Professionalization.