The purpose of this study was to investigate teachers' overall recognition of accreditation system for private childcare facilities, and provide some suggestions for its enhancement. For this purpose, several research questions were to be answered: How do teachers perceive the accreditation system? What do they think about their participation in the evaluation process? What attitudes do they have towards the self-evaluation procedure of accreditation process? What about the field observation and consulting? And what do they think about the effect on and change of their own childcare centers after institutional evaluation.
To answer these questions, a questionnaire of 24 items was designed and 200 copies were distributed, to teachers randomly selected from the schools of Gumi, Gimcheon, and Chilgok areas in Gyeongbuk province, Korea. Out of 200 copies, 188 copies were collected, and analysed by SPSS program for interpretation. The result is as following.
Firstly, teachers in childcare facilities were generally positive of accreditation system, and the more education and daycare experience they had, the more positive their perception of accreditation system was. Secondly, teachers of more education and experience tended to more eagerly participate in the orientation program for accreditation, while teachers of less education and experience were less attendant. Thirdly, teachers tended to experience hardship during self-evaluation cession, with the burden of filing many extra documents and keeping daily journals. Fourthly, the more education and daycare experience the teachers have, the more intensely they want to have assistance from helpers, and teachers of community college graduate preferred to have field-visiting helping method. Fifthly, the less education and daycare experience the teachers have, the more positive their attitude towards in-spot observation method was. This means that the more education and experience they had, the more negative their attitude towards in-spot observation method. And finally, teachers of more education and experience tended to prefer getting incentives after accreditation jobs. This means that if there is no incentives after accreditation work, childcare facilities can experience some difficulties in management, due to the demoralization of teachers. Thus, it is recommended that there should be some support from both government and private sectors to give some additional pay raise for daycare teachers.