Teachers predicting self-regulation skills of children: the relationships among teacher beliefs, teaching intentions and preschoolers’ self-regulation skills

Abstract

We designed this study to find out if teachers’ beliefs and intentions would have an impact on children’s self-regulation skills and to see if teachers would estimate self-regulation skills of children properly. There were 43 teachers and 190 preschool children as participants. We asked teachers to report their beliefs about teaching and we also observed their teaching intentions during classroom activities. For measuring self-regulation skills of children, we created story stems which were presented to participant children individually and scored with a four-point coding system. We presented the same stories for teachers. Findings showed that there was a positive correlation between the reports of children and teachers on two dimensions: waiting for own turn and having control on negative behaviour. Teacher beliefs and self-regulation skills of children were also found to be significantly correlated with each other.