The purpose of this study is to provide basic data for early childhood teachers’ grit improvement program development and social support network establishment. For this purpose, the effect of social support on grit perceived by early childhood teach...
The purpose of this study is to provide basic data for early childhood teachers’ grit improvement program development and social support network establishment. For this purpose, the effect of social support on grit perceived by early childhood teachers was analyzed focusing on the teachers’ background variables and sub-variables of social support. To this end, online and offline surveys were conducted on 754 early childhood teachers working in Seoul, Gyeonggi, and Incheon, and 750 copies of the collected questionnaires were used for analysis. On the whole, the result of the study confirmed that the social support perceived by the teachers had a generally positive effect on grit. Going into details about the results, first, the teachers’ background variables(age, education level, teaching career) had a positive effect on passion and interest persistence among the sub-variables of grit(passion, persistence, interest persistence), and age and educational background was found to have a significant effect on persistence. On the other hand, as a result of analyzing the additional input of social support variables along with the background variables of the teachers, age had an effect on all sub-variables of grit, and education had an effect on passion and interest persistence, but career had no significant effect on grit. Second, social support had a significant explanatory power in improving the grit of the teachers. In particular, among the sub-variables of social support, informational support and appraisal support had a significant effect on the sub-factors of grit. The above study results suggest that in order to increase the grit of early childhood teachers, it is necessary to increase the teachers’ social support and to provide various support systems that can help the teachers.