From Our 2010 Archives Preschoolers' Skills Get Boost From
Confident Teachers Latest Healthy Kids News FRIDAY, June 11
(HealthDay News) -- Highly confident teachers and emotional
support in the classroom play important roles in helping
preschoolers learn language and literacy skills, a new study has
found. The researchers focused on 67 preschool teachers and 328
of their students over a 30-week period. The teachers completed
a questionnaire designed to measure their level of confidence in
their teaching ability, which the study authors deemed "self-
efficacy." In addition, the researchers used trained observers
to measure the level of classroom emotional support for
students. Language and literacy skills tests were given to the
children at the beginning and end of the 30 weeks. Students
whose teachers had high self-efficacy showed gains in a measure
of an early literacy skill called print awareness, such as being
able to identify a single letter on a page. However, advances in
vocabulary knowledge skills occur