Teachers’ perception and practices related to preschoolers’ self-regulation skills in the classroom

Abstract

Development of self-regulation skills is important for ensuring life-long success. Pre-school age is the most crucial period for the development of self-regulation skills in children. In this regard, preschool teachers can facilitate and teach different strategies to develop self-regulation skills in preschoolers. However, teachers’ practices to promote self-regulation skills is influenced by their prior knowledge and belief regarding the matter. Hence, this qualitative research was designed to explore teachers’ perception and practices related to self-regulation skills of the preschoolers, who are enrolled in kindergartens situated in Dhaka Bangladesh. The findings of this study indicated that the participants had knowledge gaps about self-regulation skills in children. Moreover, the findings suggested that the participants use different strategies, among which several strategies are effective for prompting self-regulation skills while some are responsible for hampering the development of self-regulation skills in children. Furthermore, the findings show that teachers face several challenges, which are needed to be addressed immediately to ensure preschoolers’ healthy development of the self-regulation skills. Finally, as recommendation, the study suggested that kindergarten teachers’ training must be made compulsory. For that, kindergartens should be taken under government regulation and to do this, some related policies are needed to be revised. Lastly, large scale researches are needed to be conducted in order to understand the issue nationwide.