What Do Preschool Teachers Do All Day?

• In Event: Early Childhood Education Curriculum

Abstract

This study takes a teacher-focused perspective to explore one aspect of teachers’ decision making in creating learning opportunities for children by estimating how teachers allocate their time. Video recordings of 74 teachers from various site types were used to determine teachers’ engagement with children and how engaged time is further allocated to various activities/settings on a typical day at three observation waves. The results suggest that teachers do spend most of their time engaged with children, although this trended downward in the spring when compared to the fall and winter. Results also indicated large differences between teachers’ engagement in all three seasons, indicating that children in different classrooms are experiencing widely different opportunities to engage with their teacher.

Authors

• Chelsea Funari, Florida State University

• Michael Peter Mesa, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston

• Beth Michelle Phillips, Florida State University

• Jessica Ritchie, Florida State University

• Youngmin Oh, Florida State University