Linking Early Childhood Teachers' Characteristics to their Perceptions of Students' Abilities and Responsiveness to Online Professional Development

With this dissertation, I investigate the associations between early childhood teachers’ characteristics (i.e., demographics, beliefs, and skills), and (1) their perception of students’ abilities, (2) their engagement and learning in a Massively Open Online Course (MOOC), and (3) their use and perceptions of online curricular supports. I begin with a linking statement, in which I describe the rationale for this three-manuscript dissertation, and the conceptual links among the three manuscripts. In the first manuscript, I examine teacher characteristics (i.e., demographics, beliefs, and skills) and student characteristics that are related to pre-kindergarten (pre-k) teachers’ perceptions of students’ mathematics abilities. With the second manuscript, I examine the association between early childhood teacher characteristics (i.e., demographic and professional backgrounds, as well as psychological beliefs), and their engagement and learning in a MOOC focused on effective teacher-child interactions. Finally, in the third manuscript, I examine associations between pre-k teachers’ characteristics (i.e., demographic backgrounds, readiness for professional development, teacher-child interaction quality, and technology comfort and habits), and their use, and perceptions, of online curricular supports provided as part of an intervention for early childhood mathematics and science education.