A Study On Career Confusions Of Novice Directors In Public Kindergartens And Relative Coping Strategies

It isn't a smooth journey for a novice director of kindergarten to adapt to their new position. Especially with the deepening of preschool education reform and the rising of expectations for the quality of early childhood education, novice directors are faced with enormous pressure and challenges. During the first few years of their career, the novice directors of kindergarten will go through many difficulties and setbacks as well as confusions. This study aims to describe professional confusions of novice directors working in public kindergartens, to analysis potential causes of those confusions, and to propose some suggestions.This study focuses on novice directors of public kindergartens in Shanghai.85 questionnaires were adopted to collect data and in-depth interviews with three novice directors were conducted to detect concrete expression of their confusion and deep-seated reasons. The study finds that:there are large individual differences among career confusion of different novice directors; yet there are still common confusions, such as confusions with coordinating interpersonal relationship, insufficiency of individual expertise, bewilderments in making developmental decisions and plight of resources deficient.The study points out that:inadequate correlative knowledge, ability and experience are the immediate causes of those career confusions; difficulty with role adaptation is the internal reason. Meanwhile, the preschool education reform, little attention to educational administrations and short supply of preschool teachers function as the external reasons. Therefore, this thesis proposes some suggestions and strategies for the novice directors of kindergarten, educational administrations and training institutions to deal with their career confusions.