The Effects of Early Childhood Teacher’ Teaching Creativity and Play Teaching Efficacy on Play Support Competency

Objectives The purposes of this study was to investigate the effect of early childhood teachers’ teaching creativity and play teaching efficacy on play support competency, develop a teacher education program that can increase early childhood teachers’ play support competency, and present basic data. Methods An online-based survey of early childhood teachers nationwide was conducted to collect data on teaching creativity, play teaching efficacy, and play support competency of a total of 302 teachers, and the SPSS 29 program was used for data analysis. The general trend of variables was to conduct descriptive statistics, correlation analysis to find out the relationship between the three variables, and multiple regression analysis to examine the effect on play support competency. Results First, scores were higher than average in all subfactors of early childhood teachers' teaching creativity, play teaching efficacy, and play support competency, and the practical competency score for play support competency was found to be the highest. Second, it was found that there was a significant positive correlation between all sub-factors of early childhood teachers' teaching creativity, play teaching efficacy, and play support competency. Third, early childhood teachers' teaching creativity and play teaching efficacy were found to have a significant effects on play support competency. Conclusions Since early childhood teachers' teaching creativity and play teaching efficacy have been shown to be variables that can increase play support competency, we devised a method to improve early childhood teachers' teaching creativity and play teaching efficacy in order to improve teachers' play support competency. There is a need to develop and support various teacher education programs.