Structure of early childhood educators' domain-specific professional competencies and their effects on the quality of mathematical instructional situations in kindergarten and on children's increase in mathematical competencies.

最近，学前教育在培养早期特定领域学习方面变得越来越重要。这导致了对学习环境质量的更高要求，从而也对幼儿教育工作者特定领域的专业能力提出了更高的要求。第一，研究结果表明，幼儿教育工作者的领域特定能力与儿童的学习收益是相关的。然而，关于实施幼儿教育者特定领域能力的方法和条件却知之甚少。我们设想对幼儿教育工作者专业能力的不同因果效应进行分析。首先，我们将在一项横断面研究中调查幼儿教育者在数学领域特定领域的专业能力和信念的结构。我们期望能力的领域特定的组成部分(领域特定的知识、自反性和与行动相关的能力)可以被分离。其次，我们将采用纵向实验设计，通过干预培养教育工作者专业能力的不同组成部分，以确认教育工作者能力对教学质量各方面(分别是规划和学习支持)的预期因果效应。此外，我们假设对儿童数学能力的发展有影响，我们期望教育者特定领域的专业信念对这种影响起到调节作用。为了避免能力和信念的一套混乱的变量取决于学龄前环境的结构背景，我们打算进行一项两国研究，包括在德国和瑞士的研究，因为这两个国家在幼儿教育工作者的培训和幼儿教育的总体目标方面存在差异。

Preschool education has recently gained importance for fostering early domain-specific learning. This leads to higher demands on the quality of learning environments and hence also on the domain-specific professional competences of early childhood educators. First research results indicate that domain-specific competences of early childhood educators and children's learning gains are linked. However, little is known about the ways and conditions for bringing early childhood educators' domain-specific competences into effect. We envisage an analysis of the differentiated causal effects of early childhood educators' professional competences. First, we will investigate the structure of early childhood educators' domain-specific professional competences and beliefs in the domain of mathematics in a cross-sectional study. We expect that domain-specific components of competences (domain-specific knowledge, reflexive and action-related competences) can be separated. Second, employing a longitudinal and experimental design, we will foster different components of educators' professional competences through interventions in order to confirm the anticipated causal effects from the competences of educators on the facets of the quality of instruction (planning and learning support respectively). Furthermore we assume effects on the growth of children's mathematical competences and we expect the educators' domain-specific professional beliefs to play a moderating role on this effect. In order to avoid a confounded set of variables of competences and beliefs depending on the structural context of the preschool setting, we intend a bi-national study including research in Germany and Switzerland, as these two countries differ regarding the training of early childhood educators and the overall aims of early childhood education.