Development and effectiveness of teacher education program to improve parent education competency of infant teachers

The purpose of this study is to develop an educational program to enhance the parental education competency of infant teachers so that infant teachers can recognize their role as parental educators and implement parental education in the child care field. To this end, prior research analysis and a demand survey were conducted in the analysis and design stage and 288 teachers in charge of the 2-year-old infant class and 239 parents with 2-year-old children. In the implementation stage, a program (draft) was executed for 10 infant teachers, and in the evaluation stage, the final program was developed by revising and supplementing based on the data collected in the implementation stage. The educational program to enhance the parental education competency of infant teachers aims to enhance the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of teachers, which are the categories of parental education competency of infant teachers, and the educational content was organized by selecting eight topics in connection with the educational goal. Teaching and learning methods are conducted through lectures, field case-oriented discussions, temperament tests, field visits, and role-play activities through cases, and are operated offline for the 8th session (16th session). The results of this study suggest that programs to enhance parental education competency of infant teachers should be actively implemented, and programs that can comprehensively enhance parental education competency are needed.