Profiles of German early childhood teachers' pedagogical content beliefs and the relation to their competencies

The influence of early childhood teachers' beliefs on different aspects of their professional competencies has become a topic of growing importance in early childhood education and care. The presented study investigated pedagogical content beliefs of 120 early childhood teachers in German kindergartens. The relations between their beliefs and the assessed quality of interaction with children, the competency of professional vision, theoretical knowledge, and educational background were examined. The study focused on the domain of Instructional Support because of its relevance for children's cognitive development. Five distinct profiles of teachers' beliefs were identified from a person-centered approach of latent profile analysis. The analyses of profile-differences showed that profiles of teachers with similar beliefs significantly differed in their theoretical knowledge and educational background. This paper concludes by outlining analogies of the resulting profiles with the concurrent evidence in the field of ECEC, discussing study-specific limitations and suggesting potential implementation for teachers' educations as well as starting points for further research investigations.