Korean Early Childhood Educators’ Perceptions of Importance and Implementation of Strategies to Address Young Children’s Social-Emotional Competence

In South Korea, there has been a rapid increase in challenging behaviors and other social-emotional difficulties at the early childhood level. Korean early childhood educators’ perspectives and strategies to address young children’s social-emotional competencies and challenging behaviors were investigated. Overall, results suggest that many Korean early childhood educators recognize the importance of social-emotional teaching strategies but report low levels of implementation of specific social-emotional strategies. The study also examined the effect of the categorical predictors such as special education teaching experience, children’s classroom age level, and duration of early childhood teaching experience on participants’ implementation levels. Korean early childhood teachers’ importance perceptions, regardless of their categorical variables, were the most influential predictor of implementation. Results are discussed and implications are delineated.