Inspection on Reality of Kindergarten Teachers ’ Educational Behaviors — A Case Study in China

The research selects 20 kindergarten teachers in urban and rural areas in Chongqing as the samples and adopts time sampling observation method to investigate into kindergarten teachers’ educational behaviors from seven perspectives, i.e. education & teaching, participation into children’s activities, daily behavioral management, observation& monitoring, custody and emotional expression, teachers’ daily activities and teachers’ personal activities. Research results show that kindergarten teachers’ educational behaviors have improved better than before and become more and more reasonable. However, there are still some problems, such as excessive teaching and requirements, inadequate listening to children’s ideas and stimulation of their initiatives, low effectiveness of evaluation on children’s behaviors, excessive orders and interventions in daily management, inadequate emotional exchanges between teachers and children, insufficient care for children’s individual demands, etc.


Introduction
Educational behaviors refer to the activities or actions that teachers demonstrate in actual education.They are the total sum of teachers' educational methodologies, actions and approaches as well as external manifestations of teachers' educational concepts [1].Teachers' educational behaviors directly interact with children and exert extremely important effects on children's development.At the same time, "it can not only provide opportunities for teachers to reflect on their own educational practices but also stimulate teachers to contemplate on their own educational concepts so as to improve their qualities through analyzing teachers' educational behaviors in details" [2].In this sense, teachers' educational behaviors are an important cutting point to investigate into the status quo of teachers' professional qualities and educational quality.Based on this, the research selects 20 teachers in 5 kindergartens in urban and rural areas in Chongqing as the targets, explores into the kindergarten teachers' educational behaviors, and tries to provide certain basis for improving kindergarten teachers' professional qualities and kindergarten's educational quality.

Research Targets
The research selects 20 main teachers in the kindergarten classes.Among them, 10 teachers are in rural areas and 10 teachers are in urban areas and in every region, there are 5 novice teachers and 5 veteran teachers.

Research Tool
The research adopts "Manual of Evaluation on Kindergarten's Educational Quality (Tool V: "Observations on Teachers' Behaviors") [3] compiled by former Central Pre-schooling Teaching & Research Office as the research tool.It classifies teachers' educational behaviors into seven dimensions of education & teaching, participation into children's activities, daily behavioral management, observation & monitoring, custody and emotional expression, teachers' daily activities and teachers' personal activities, as well as 49 variables (refer to Table 1 for details).

Data Collection
The research mainly adopts 30-second-interval time sampling observation method.On each observation day, the research carries out two observations, with each lasting for 10 minutes, totaling up to 20 minutes.For each research target, two consecutive observations days' observations are conducted.In total, four times' observations are executed for each target.The total time is 40 minutes.Therefore, 80 observation records are obtained.There are altogether 20 research targets.Thus, there are 40 observation days.The accumulated observation time is 800 minutes.More than 1600 observation records are gained.Among them, there are 1582 valid records.

Data Processing
The research applies SPSS 11.5 statistics software to carry out descriptive statistics of the distribution of each behavior.In addition, the paper conducts X 2 test on the total variations of educational behaviors among urban and rural kindergartens.

Overall Situation of Educational Behaviors
Among teachers' seven types of educational behaviors, education & teaching behaviors appear the most frequently, reaching 23.5 times per person per day.It accounts for 30.1% of all the behaviors.Second, teacher's daily management behaviors appear 15.6 times per person per day.It accounts for 19.9%, ranking No. 2.
In the comparison between urban and rural areas, teachers' education & teaching behaviors in urban areas are 6.3 times per person per day more than those in rural areas.There are significant differences (P < 0.01).Teachers' daily management behaviors in urban areas are 2.4 times per person per day less than those in rural areas.There are also significant differences (P < 0.05).They demonstrate no significant differences in other educational behaviors.
In addition, teachers' educational behaviors of participation into children's activities, observation & monitoring and daily activities account for a large percentage in all the behaviors, respectively 16.6%, 15.3% and 13.0%.Among all educational behaviors, custody & emotional expression and personal activities are the least, only occupying 2.8% and 2.3% (refer to Table 2).
Compared with the results of the research conducted by Xiang Zongping and Liao Yi (1995) [4] (education & teaching behaviors occur 15.7 times per person per day and personal activities appear 8.7 times per person per day), teachers' education & teaching behaviors increase obviously and personal activities obviously reduce in

Education & Teaching Behaviors
Among education and teaching behaviors, teaching behaviors account for 58.3%, reaching 13.7 times per person per day and ranking top one among all the behaviors.Instruct/Require for practices behaviors rank the second, reaching 8.5 times per person per day.Evaluation & feedback behaviors are the least, only 1.3 times per person per day, taking up 5.5%.In particular, teaching behaviors in urban areas are subtly more than those in rural areas.Instruct/require for practices behaviors in rural areas are more than those in urban areas (refer to Table 3).

1) Teaching Behaviors
Among teaching behaviors, direct explanations or presentations account for 31.4%,reaching 4.3 times per person per day and ranking top one.Instilling knowledge ranks the second, reaching 3.0 times per person per day (refer to Table 3).The results are remarkably different from the results in the research conducted by Liu Zhanlan et al. (2008) that instilling knowledge behaviors reach 4.0 times per person per day, ranking top one, while direct presentations reach 3.7 times per person per day, ranking the second [5].
Teacher's listening to children's answers to and expressions of their own ideas, children's questions about relevant knowledge, and children's requests for relevant requests are less than 10% and even none (refer to Table 4).
2) Instruct/Require for Practices Among instruct/require for practices behaviors, help/suggest/explain behaviors are the most, accounting for 58.8%.Instruct/require for practices rank the second, reaching 2.1 times per person per day, accounting for 24.7%.Encourage children to continue activities behaviors reach one time per person per day, accounting for 11.9%.However, listen to children's statement of difficulties and provide activity choices behaviors only reach 0.2 times per person per day, accounting for 2.4% respectively (refer to Table 4).

3) Evaluation & Feedback Behaviors
Among the evaluation/feedback on children's activity results behaviors, teachers mainly show praises for children.The praising behaviors take up for 76.9% of such behaviors (general praise account for 46.1% and specific praise account for about 30.8%).From this, we can see that general praise occur the most frequently.Specific praises are less comparatively.Moreover, there is no listening to relevant sayings about behavioral evaluation (refer to Table 4).

Management on Children's Daily Behaviors
Table 1 shows that daily management on children's behaviors account for 15.6% among the seven types of educational behaviors, ranking the second.In particular, giving instructions, and requiring for silence & attention are outstanding, respectively account for 47.4% and 26.3%.Propose rules behaviors account for 16.0%.
Evaluation & feedback and solve individual's questions behaviors only account for 7.1% and 3.2% (refer to Table 3).
Among give instructions and propose rules behaviors, teachers in urban and rural areas both demonstrate simple give instructions behaviors (account for 98.6%) and propose rules behaviors (accounting for 96%), while listen to children's response to instructions and listen to their sayings about relevant rules respectively account for 1.4% and 4% (refer to Table 5).
In evaluation/feedback on children's behaviors, positive feedback and evaluations account for 72.7%.In particular, general positive feedbacks account for 54.5% while specific positive feedbacks only account for 18.2% (refer to Table 5).From this we can see that teachers' evaluation and feedback on children's activities and behaviors mainly focus on positive praise and confirmations.No matter the evaluation/feedback is positive or negative, the contents are mostly general and common praise or disapproval.

Observation & Monitoring
Observation & monitoring behaviors mainly include observation with records, accompanying monitoring and general inspections.Table 6 shows that whether in urban areas or rural areas, teachers' observations and monitoring behaviors on children are mainly general inspections after teachers give instructions, reaching 8.8 times per person per day, accounting for 73.3%.Accompanying monitoring behaviors rank the second, reaching 2.9 times per person per day, accounting for 24.2%.Observations with records are 0. schooling education, which thus improves children teachers' social status, enhances kindergarten teachers' sense of profession values and encourages teachers' career devotedness.Second, the improvement of teachers' professional quality due to national, provincial and municipal training planning on kindergarten teachers' which have been implemented in recent years has made some achievements.
Third, due to the expansion of the scale of cultivating talents in pre-schooling and elevation of talent levels in universities, many graduates with bachelor and master degrees enter kindergartens, thus facilitating the improvement of overall kindergarten teachers' qualities.
Fourth, the implementation of kindergarten teachers' qualification system also promotes the improvement of kindergarten teachers' professional qualities to some degree.
However, there are still some problems, such as excessive teaching and requirements, inadequate listening to children's ideas and stimulation of their initiatives, low effectiveness of evaluation on children's behaviors, excessive orders and interventions in daily management, inadequate emotional exchanges between teachers and children, and insufficient care for children's individual demands.The main reasons are: First, the structure of kindergarten teachers' professional knowledge is weak, i.e., "practical knowledge" closely related to education & teaching is relevantly solid while basic cultural knowledge and discipline knowledge is weak.As a result [6], it is dwifficult for teachers to deepen into the evaluation on children.The evaluations are quite general.
Second, teachers-to-children ratio in kindergartens is relatively low (the research finds that the average teachers-to-children ratio is 1:18.In few rural areas, the ratio reached 1:30).The teachers shoulder a heavy burden, get tired of their profession, and lack sufficient energy to care for children's wills and emotions.

Conclusions
Based on the above discussion and analysis, we believe: First, in pre-employment education, common education should be enhanced.Teachers' cultural qualities should be improved and the validity of professional knowledge education should be strengthened.
Second, pay attention to the training of discipline knowledge and teachers' psychological health in post-employment trainings so as to solve the educational behaviors caused due to teachers' lack of discipline knowledge and help teachers adjust their psychological pressure.
Third, expand the registration and distribution of kindergarten teachers so as to relieve their burdens.Finally, enhance the investment into and support on children's education as well as stabilize teaching personnel in rural and remote areas.

Table 1 .
Observation scale of teachers' educational behaviors.
Instruct/Require practices: Instruct children to answer Qs with operations and continue activities as required Provide activity choices: Provide more than two activity choices for children Evaluation/ Feedback on results of activities General praise: Make good judgment only on the results Specific praise: Point out the details worth praising General disapproval: Make negative judgment on the results Specific disapproval: Point out the negative details

Table 2 .
Overall situation of kindergarten teachers' educational behaviors in urban and rural areas in Chongqing (times per person per day).Compared to the results of the research carried out by Liu Zhanlan et al. (2008) [5] (teachers' personal activities rank No. 6, reaching 3.0 times per person per day), personal activities also reduce obviously in the research.Although custody & emotional expression behaviors increase compared to the situation in 2008, a lack of emotional communications between teachers and children still occurs.

Table 3 .
Detailed situation of several major types of educational behaviors among kindergarten teachers in Chongqing (times per person per day).

Table 4 .
Overall distribution of three types of education & teaching behaviors among kindergarten teachers in Chongqing (times per person per day).

Table 5 .
Overall distribution of daily behavior management among kindergarten teachers in Chongqing (times per person per day).

Table 6 .
Overall distribution of observation & monitoring behaviors among kindergarten teachers in Chongqing (times per person per day).