This study aimed to explore the perception of early childhood education to be needed for preparation in the future society by teachers. Specifically, this study aimed to explore how young children's competencies needed in the era of future education, ...
This study aimed to explore the perception of early childhood education to be needed for preparation in the future society by teachers. Specifically, this study aimed to explore how young children's competencies needed in the era of future education, educational content needed for preschoolers, and teacher's role for their education.
The research questions to be addressed for the purpose of this study were follows. First, what are the core competencies of early children in the era of the 4th industrial revolution? Second, what are the educational contents to be taught in the early childhood education stage in the era of the 4th industrial revolution? Third, what is the role of early childhood teachers in preparation for the era of the 4th industrial revolution?
The open questionnaires were distributed and collected to explore the early childhood teachers' perception structure on 'early childhood education in the era of the 4th industrial revolution' with experience in early childhood education. Out of a total of 110 responses, 105 responses were used for analysis. The collected data went through a refinement process of word correction, control, and removal before coding. The “NetMiner” program was used for semantic network analysis, and 22, 17, and 19 keywords with a frequency of 3 or more were extracted. Based on the extracted keywords, degree centrality, closeness centrality, betweenness centrality, and eigenvector centrality were examined.
The research results were as follows. First, early childhood teachers recognized 'creativity', 'self-initiative', 'problem-solving ability', 'playfulness', 'adaptability', and 'personality' as the core competencies of young children required in the era of the 4th industrial revolution'. Second, early childhood teachers perceived 'creativity development', 'self-directed learning', 'play-centered education', and 'living together' should be taught at the early childhood education stage in the era of the 4th industrial revolution. Third, early childhood teachers perceived ‘inducers of divergent/creative thinking’, ‘play participants/supporters’, ‘coaching’, and ‘emotional supporters’ as ‘the role of early childhood teachers in preparation for the era of the 4th industrial revolution’.
This study has the research significance of exploring the perception of early childhood teachers for early childhood education in preparation in the 4th industrial revolution era and providing basic ideas to guide 'educational direction in future early childhood education' reflecting the opinions. Accordingly, this study provide the basic data to explore the development of teacher education programs empirically in preparation for the 4th industrial revolution or practical implication to find specific practical methods to perform the teachers’ roles.