Early Childhood Teachers’ Perception, Implementation and Demands of Value Education

Objectives In this study, we examined early childhood teachers' perceptions of value education and explored the implementation of value education in early childhood education institutions, and explored demands for value edu-cation improvement. Methods For this purpose, from May 21 to August 5, 2023, a total of 20 individual interviews were conducted twice per person for 10 teachers in kindergartens and daycare centers in Seoul and Gyeonggi for 4~5 year olds, and researcher journals, research participants journals, and other data were collected and analyzed. Results Early childhood teachers’ perception of value education was divided into ‘education to create a foundation for behavior’, ‘education for forming the right personality’, and ‘essential education for living together’. Also, early childhood teachers' value education implementation was divided into ‘reading values i n play and daily life,’ ‘informing various values through value activities,’ ‘transmitting value through modeling,’ and ‘continuing value education with family.’. In addition, the demands for improving value education for early childhood teachers were divided into ‘activation of value understanding education for teachers,’, ‘support for value education implementation materials for young children’, ‘providing a place for communication between teachers to share value education ex-periences’, and “support for improving parents’ and society’s perception of value education.” Conclusions This study is meaningful in that it understood how early childhood teachers perceive value education, how they implement value education, what their needs to improving value education by exploring early childhood teachers' perception, implementation, and demands of value education. Through this, it is expected to be provided as basic data to understand the practical measures of early childhood teachers for early childhood value education and prepare support measures for more effective value education implementation.