This study focused on the relationships among teachers’playfulness, teachers’positive
play beliefs, teaching efficacy on play and teacher’s strategies of problem behavior
guidance, and especially the mediating effects of teaching efficacy on children’s play.
Subjects were 151 early childhood teachers in Seoul and Chungcheungnam-do. The
collected data were analyzed using simple regression, hierarchical multiple regression
and the Sobel test. The main results of this study were as follows. First, teachers'
playfulness and teachers’positive play beliefs had a positive influence on their
proactive, positive reactive strategies of problem behaviors. On the other hand,
teachers’ positive play beliefs had a negative influence on their negative reactive
strategies of problem behaviors. Second, teachers' playfulness and teachers’positive
play beliefs had a positive influence on their teaching efficacy on play. Finally, the
effects of teachers' playfulness on their proactive, positive reactive strategies of
problem behaviors of preschoolers were totally mediated by their teaching efficacy on
play.