The Correlates of Turkish Preschool Preservice Teachers’ Social Competence, Empathy and Communication Skills

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to examine the associations between Turkish preschool pre-service teacher's personal and educational characteristics, and their social competence, empathy, and communication skills. A total of 385 state university Turkish pre-service teachers (age range 18 to 32 years) from the early childhood education field completed a Demographic Information Form on personal and educational characteristics, the Social Skills Inventory (SSI) Scale measuring their social competence, The Scales of Empathic Tendency for measuring empathy skills, and a Communication Skills Evaluation Scale measuring communication skills. Bivariate Pearson-correlations, independent t tests, and one-way ANOVAs were used to test study hypotheses. Results indicated that women scored higher on empathy and communication skills, and having more friends was related to higher social competence and empathy. Pre-service teachers who were members of a social club scored higher on communication skills than their peers. Additional associations among variables, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

What Is the Relationship Between Empathy and Mental Health in Preschool Teachers: The Role of Teaching Experience

“…These results imply that these two empathy components may be protective factors for preschool teachers' mental health. The positive effects of empathic concern and perspective taking were supported by a large number of research from both medical (Thirioux et al, 2016) and educational fields (Ahmetoglu and Acar, 2016;Bullough, 2019). This result was also supported by a meta-analysis (Longmire and Harrison, 2016) of 269 independent samples, which found positive effects of perspective taking and empathic concern on various outcome domains at work.…”

“…The preschool teachers' job is an emotional effort (Lee et al, 2016). Throughout their whole career life span, preschool teachers were surrounded by various emotions, and the teachers have to feel, understand, and react to others' emotions appropriately (Ahmetoglu and Acar, 2016;Gaines et al, 2019). Empathy, the ability to connect others' feeling without losing himself/herself (Chiu and Yeh, 2017), is found to play an important role in preschool education (Ahmetoglu and Acar, 2016).…”

“…Throughout their whole career life span, preschool teachers were surrounded by various emotions, and the teachers have to feel, understand, and react to others' emotions appropriately (Ahmetoglu and Acar, 2016;Gaines et al, 2019). Empathy, the ability to connect others' feeling without losing himself/herself (Chiu and Yeh, 2017), is found to play an important role in preschool education (Ahmetoglu and Acar, 2016). Research has suggested that empathy is one of the crucial factors that influence how successful preschool teachers are in leading their personal and professional lives (Vucinic et al, 2020).…”

Examining of the Construct of Empathy in Education: An Analysis of Teacher Candidates' Reflective Writing

“…Empathy is increasingly identified as an important component of effective teaching (Ahmetoglu & Acar, 2016;Daniel, 2015;Laletas & Reupert, 2016), particularly for engaging in culturally responsive practices across cultural differences (Andrews, Richmond, Warren, Petchauer, & Floden, 2018;McAllister & Irvine, 2002). Through our research, we emphasize the importance of social emotional competence and non-cognitive attributes for teacher candidates (Klassen et al, 2018).…”

How perceived school culture relates to work engagement among primary and secondary school teachers? Roles of affective empathy and job tenure

“…All these issues were positively associated with higher work engagement ( Granziera and Perera, 2019 ; Wang et al, 2020 ). More importantly, affective empathy was proved to be related to teachers’ job variously, for example, empathy affected social competence and communication skills ( Ahmetoglu and Acar, 2016 ), professional identity ( Glazzard and Dale, 2013 ; Zhu et al, 2019 ), and professional efficacy ( Goroshit and Hen, 2016 ) in teachers. In other words, greater affective empathy may be positively associated with teachers’ work engagement.…”