Objective: Covid-19 is changing many aspects of child care programs. The objective of this study was to explore how the pandemic and mitigation efforts affected the experiences and practices at child care centers in the summer of 2020. Methods: Focus group interviews and mobile surveys were conducted with principals and teachers of child care centers in August and September 2020. Descriptive statistics including frequency distributions, means and standard deviations and mean differences were used to analyze the survey data with SPSS 22.0. Results: It was found that each sector of child care settings experienced different difficulties and had various needs. Young children's lack of energy, child care teachers' workload and stress, and principles' efforts to interrupt transmission of the infectious disease based on insufficient government guideline and supports were revealed as the main experiences. Conclusion/Implications: The Covid-19 pandemic has had a tandem of influences on daily life at child care centers. As policy makers consider additional guidelines or supports measures to prevent the infection and spread of Covid-19 at child care centers, long-term as well as short-term plans at various levels should be considered to meet the unique needs of child care programs.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine young children's social experiences during COVID-19. In this study, social experiences are defined as children's social interactions and relationships, their educational experiences, and their daily life experiences in child care centers. Methods: Participants include nine child care teachers and fifteen young children. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with individual teachers, interviews with young children, and small group storytelling activities with young children. Results: The main findings in exploring meanings and implications of childcare consulting were as follows. First, childcare consulting was recognized as a process of learning about changes through mutual relationships. Second, the different ways to practice childcare consulting, the formation of the learning culture of an organization to help experience collective intelligence, the process of finding various solutions through mutual communication, and the improvement of childcare teachers' professional capabilities while reflecting the current times and context were all investigated. Conclusion/Implications: Given the findings of the study, the importance of childcare consulting, and the ways to establish its systems were discussed.

Objective: This study investigated direct and indirect influences of fathers' parenting involvement on maternal parenting competence by exploring pathways between fathers' parenting involvement, maternal inner strength, and maternal parenting competence. Methods: A total of 329 mothers with 3-year-old children responded to online survey questionnaires, which included questions about fathers' parenting involvement, maternal inner strength, and maternal parenting competence. The data was analyzed by Pearson's correlation coefficients and Structural Equation Modeling. Results: It was observed that maternal inner strength perfectly mediated the association between father's parenting involvement and maternal parenting competence. More concretely, a direct effect of fathers' parenting involvement on maternal parenting competence was not found. It was also found that fathers' parenting involvement effects maternal parenting competence indirectly. The effect of fathers' parenting involvement on maternal inner strength was the greatest among all associations between fathers' parenting involvement, maternal inner strength, and maternal parenting competence. Conclusion/Implications: These findings have insights for research and practice, which emphasize the important considerations that enhancing maternal inner strength and the power of fathers' parenting involvement on maternal inner strength should be emphasized in order to improve maternal parenting competence.

Objective: Studies have shown that turnover intention of teachers' in early childhood educational centers tend to negatively affect the quality of child care and children's adjustment. However, few studies have examined the underlying mechanism that increases teachers' turnover intention and have barely focused on environmental factors. We aimed to test whether workplace characteristics may affect teachers' turnover interntion through personal factors (i.e., burnout and health). Methods: A sample of 262 teachers participated in the study. Workplace characteristics, burnout, health and turnover intention were assesed through self-report questionnaires. Data were analyzed through SEM using Mplus and the significance of mediation effects were estimated by the bootstrapping confidence intervals. Results: Finidngs indicated that a poor workplace enviornment directly predicted high turnover intentions of teachers and indirectly predicted through their high burnout and poor health contidion. Conclusion/Implications: These findings contriubed to provide better understaning about an effective future direction for policies and intervention programs in order to decrease teachers' turnover intention and subsequently increase the quality of early childhood educational centers.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to verify the effect of directors' coaching leadership on teachers' play implementation competencies and the mediation effects of teachers' reflective thinking and creative job performance by conducting a structural relationship analysis. Methods: The subjects of this study were child care teachers who were purposefully sampled from the metropolitan area which includes Seoul, Incheon, and Gyeonggi Province. A total of 267 questionnaires were analyzed after excluding poor or incomplete questionnaires by use of SPSS Statistics 25.0 and the AMOS 21.0. Results: Directors' coaching leadership was positively correlated with teachers' reflective thinking, creative job performance, and their play implementation competencies. Directors' coaching leaderships directly and indirectly influenced teachers' play implementation competencies, which was mediated by teachers' reflective thinking and their creative job performance. Conclusion/Implications: Directors' coaching leadership has a significant implication for teachers' play implementation competencies which became more important after the national curriculum standards had been revised.

Objective: This study explored the effect of childcare teacher's playfulness on burnout through ego-resiliency. Methods: The participants of this study were 265 childcare teachers working at childcare centers. Data was collected through questionnaire on teacher's palyfulness, ego-resiliency and burnout were analyzed with descriptive statistics and Pearson's correlation analysis using AMOS 10.0 and SPSS 21.0. The path included in the study model was verified by Structural Equation Modeling(SEM) and for the analysis of the mediating effect, Bootstrapping was used. Results: First, childcare teachers' playfulness had a negative influence on burnout. Second, childcare teachers' ego-resiliency had a negative influence on burnout. Third, childcare teachers' playfulness had a positive influence on ego-resiliency. Fourth, childcare teachers' playfulness had an indirect effect on burnout through ego-resiliency. The effect of childcare teachers' playfulness on their burnout was completely mediated by ego-resiliency. Conclusion/Implications: When developing a program to intervene in the burnout of childcare teachers, there needs to be more concern about ego-resiliency than playfulness.

Objective: The purpose of this study is to examine the mediating effect of teacher-child emotional, verbal, and behavioral interactions on the relationship between teacher playfulness and children's peer abilities. Methods: The research method used the questionnaire method to collect data on 420 children aged 3-5 years old, targeting 108 homeroom teachers working at early childhood education institutions located in Seoul and Gyeonggi area. The collected data was analyzed using the IBM SPSS 23.0 statistical program and the PROCESS macro of Hayes (2013). Results: This study confirmed that teachers' verbal, emotional, and physical interactions are closely related to young children's peer competence. In addition, it was confirmed that the teacher's playability is an important variable that affects not only the emotional, verbal, and physical interactions between the teacher and the infant, but also the peer competence of young children. Conclusion/Implications: The results of this study have significance as basic data that suggests that it is necessary to improve the playability of teachers and increase the quality level of the multifaceted aspects of teacher-infant interaction in order to support young children's peer competence.

Objective: This study explored the relationship between early childhood teachers' teaching efficacy, teacher-child interaction, and preschoolers' school readiness. Methods: The data were drawn from the seventh wave of the Panel Study on Korean Children. The subjects of this study were 1,150 preschoolers and their teachers. Early childhood teachers reported their teaching efficacy, their interaction with preschoolers, and preschoolers' school readiness. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results: First, early childhood teachers' teaching efficacy did not have a direct effect on preschoolers' school readiness. Second, early childhood teachers' teaching efficacy had an indirect effect on preschoolers' school readiness through teacher-child interaction. In other words, teachers with a high level of teaching efficacy had high-quality interactions with preschoolers, which led to preschoolers showing a high level of school readiness. Conclusion/Implications: The results of this study highlight the importance of teachers' high teaching efficacy and high-quality interactions between teachers and preschoolers to improve preschoolers' school readiness. In addition, this study contributes to a better understanding of the mechanism by which teachers' teaching efficacy influences preschoolers' school readiness.