The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of communication with parents on self-efficacy and how students' self-reflection and empathy mediate these effects among early childhood education majors who are prospective early childhood teachers...
The purpose of this study was to explore the effects of communication with parents on self-efficacy and how students' self-reflection and empathy mediate these effects among early childhood education majors who are prospective early childhood teachers. The specific research questions are as follows Research question 1. What are the direct effects of parent-child communication, self-reflection, and empathy on self-efficacy of preservice early childhood teachers? Research question 2. What are the indirect effects of parent-child communication on self-efficacy of preservice early childhood teachers through self-reflection and empathy?
A preliminary study was conducted from May 10 to May 17, 2023, to confirm the validity of the parent-child communication, self-efficacy, self-reflection, and empathy questionnaires among 291 college students from two universities in Qibak, Shandong Province. Then, from May 25 to June 25, 2023, a survey was conducted among 1217 college students from four universities in Qibak, Shandong Province and Changzhou, Jiangsu Province to explore the relationship between each variable. Data analysis was conducted using SPSS 24.0 and AMOS 24.0 to perform frequency analysis, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, structural model, and mediation effect analysis.
The main findings of this study are as follows.
First, the pre-service teachers' parent-child communication, self-efficacy, self-reflection, and empathy tended to be high overall. Among the subfactors of parent-child communication, open communication was higher than semi-closed communication, and in self-efficacy, self-regulatory efficacy, self-confidence, and task difficulty were preferred. Self-reflection showed above-average levels of each subfactor, with self-understanding being the highest, followed by self-regulation and activity, self-design, and self-reflection. For empathy, cognitive empathy was higher than emotional empathy among the subfactors. The general trend of these research variables was conducted to analyze the overall status of pre-service early childhood teachers before verifying the structural relationship between parent-child communication, self-efficacy, self-reflection, and empathy and the influence of the variables.
Second, confirmatory factor analysis was conducted to ensure that the four-factor structure of the original scale was adequately aligned with the theoretical work of this thesis. The overall fit indices for parent-child communication, self-reflection, empathy, and self-efficacy indicated a good fit of the model.
Third, we analyzed the correlations between parent-child communication, self-efficacy, self-reflection, and empathy of prospective early childhood teachers and found that all correlations were significant, i.e., the more open and semi-closed the parent-child communication, the higher the self-efficacy, self-reflection, and empathy.
Fourth, the structural relationships among the variables of parent-child communication, self-efficacy, self-reflection, and empathy of prospective early childhood teachers were analyzed for goodness-of-fit of the proposed model and the final model was accepted.
Fifth, the relationship between parent-child communication, self-efficacy, self-reflection, and empathy of preservice early childhood teachers was examined by setting up a structural equation model and checking the model fit and effectiveness. The results showed that parent-child communication of preservice early childhood teachers had a direct effect on self-reflection, empathy, and self-efficacy, and an indirect effect on self-efficacy through self-reflection and empathy.
The results of this study confirmed that parent-child communication, self-reflection, and empathy are the variables that affect the self-efficacy of preservice early childhood teachers in China and act as factors that enhance the self-efficacy of preservice early childhood teachers in China. This suggests that the higher the level of open communication self-reflection and empathy in parent-child communication, the better the self-efficacy of preschool teachers will be able to fulfill their roles, which will affect the development and growth of young children.
This study analyzed the effects of parent-child communication on the self-efficacy of pre-service early childhood teachers, and also identified the effects of self-reflection and empathy, which have important implications for the improvement of education quality, curriculum diversity, and autonomy and responsibility of early childhood teachers in the field of education.