Objective: The purpose of this study was to investigate the differences in early
childhood teachers’ perceptions of the importance and institutional performance
regarding young children’s rights.
Methods: 171 early childhood teachers responded to the questionnaires. The data
were analyzed by using the paired sample t-test and the IPA graph to identify
differences in the teachers’ perceptions of the importance and performance of
each right.
Results: First, the teachers perceived the importance of children’s rights to be
high but low in institutional performance. The main effect of teaching years on
the perception appeared significant only regarding performance of the rights of
protection and participation. The main effect of teacher education experiences
was significant in all areas except the importance of survival rights. The results
from Two-Way ANOVA showed the two variables have no interaction. Second,
the second quadrant of the IPA matrix displayed the items regarding initiative
and autonomy of young children. Both inexperienced- and highly-experiencedteachers,
when they had teacher education, recognized that the items related to
participation rights should be further improved.
Conclusion/Implications: We discussed the various ways in which children’s
rights should be improved and ways of improving teacher education according
to teacher variables in order to promote young children’s rights