Effects of early childhood teachers’ curriculum implementation autonomy on practice of respecting young children’s rights: Mediated by teacher-child interaction

Objectives The purpose of this study is to reveal the mediating effect of teacher-child interaction on the effect of early childhood teachers' curriculum implementation autonomy on the practice of respecting young children’s rights. Methods The subjects of this study were 266 early childhood teachers working at early childhood education programs located in G city. For this study, early childhood teachers' curriculum implementation autonomy, teacher-child interaction, and practice of respecting young children’s rights scales were used. The collected data was analyzed using SPSS WIN 25.0 and PROCESS macro 4.0 programs. Pearson's correlation analysis and regression analysis according to Baron and Kenny's three-step procedures were administered. To verify the significance of the mediating effect, bootstrapping resampling was performed 10,000 times. Results First, there were significant positive correlations between early childhood teachers' curriculum implementation autonomy and teacher-child interaction and the practice of respecting children’s rights. Second, teacher-child interaction showed a partial mediating effect between early childhood teachers' curriculum implementation autonomy and the practice of respecting young children’s rights. Conclusions Teacher-child interaction was identified as a major variable mediating the effect of early childhood teachers' curriculum implementation autonomy on the practice of respecting young children’s rights. This study implies that multilateral efforts are needed to enhance early childhood teachers’ level of curriculum implementation autonomy and the quality of teacher-child interaction in order to foster their practices of respecting young children's rights.