Identifying relationships between self regulatory skills of preschool children and teacher beliefs and intentions

Starting with the first day in professional life, teachers start to shape their own beliefs and intentions based on their own education they took, geography they grew up, and cultural background. This study was set up in order to find out whether these beliefs and intentions of teachers have effects on children's self regulation skills. The study was set in five different independent preschool institutions located in five different metropolitan districts of the city of Izmir which are run by the Ministry of National Education. Study included 43 teachers and 190 children. In the scope of the research, with permission, parts of question form "Teaching Beliefs and Intentions" by Herzog-Wilcox were adapted into Turkish as "Questionnaire Form for Teaching Beliefs" and "Observation Form for Teaching Intentions". Stories were generated based on five sub dimensions of self regulation in order to measure the self regulation skills of children. These stories were presented to the children and the answers given by children were evaluated via 4 pointed coding system that is used through its functionality by Kuypers (2013). Stories were presented to both the children and the teachers, the given answers were compared with Spearman Correlation Analysis in order to evaluate self regulation skills. Findings show there is a positive correlation between self regulations' subdivisions 'waiting your turn' (r=,166) and 'have a control on negative behavior' (r=,149) on answers of teachers and children. As a result it is found that there is a significant difference between teaching beliefs of teachers and self regulation skills of children (p< ,05). As a result of this study teachers might contribute to both social development and self regulation skills, not only by making information investment on content of education program but also by making information investment on themselves.