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Toddler's and pre-school child's characteristics as perceived by the mothers and pre-school teachers: Do their free descriptions resemble the five-factor model of personality?
Maja Zupančič & Tina Kavčič
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Written in English. | Published: February 14, 2002
Abstract: The present study was designed to examine whether pre-school teachers' free-descriptions of toddlers (1 to 3 years) and pre-school children (3 to 7 years) could be categorised using the Five-Factor Model (FFM) taxonomy. 184 pre-school teachers described randomly-chosen toddlers and pre-school children attending pre-school institutions. The teachers' expressions were coded using the FFM coding scheme comprising five main categories with three subcategories each, and nine additional categories. In addition, frequency distributions of (sub)category use were compared between mothers and pre-school teachers and within caregiver-pairs (mothers and teachers) for the toddlers (N=47) to determine how they might vary according to the role of the person providing the descriptions, and whether the pairs of toddler caregivers agreed when describing the same child. Regardless of the children's ages, a vast majority of the respondents' descriptors were classified within the FFM, which demonstrates the taxonomy useful for describing toddlers and pre-school children in different contexts (family, pre-school). Some differences were found in the proportions of descriptors belonging to specific (sub)categories which were used by different evaluators (mothers, teachers of toddlers), as well as according to the children's ages (as assessed by their teachers), while the level of agreement between mothers and teachers in describing the same toddler was considered low.
Keywords: personality, free-descriptions, Five-Factor Model, toddlers, pre-school children
