Visualization of nursery teacher’s tacit knowledge using knowledge structuring - For efficient acquisition of childcare skills
Authors: Oshiyama Chiaki , Ishiwata Ichiro , Nishimura Takuichi 
Published: June 2023

Skilled professionals work implicitly. Even in the field of childcare, childcare education is said to be an invisible educational method, and the ability to perform the action is implicit. A previous study on experts in educational settings (Leinhardt & Smith, 1998) found that, compared to beginners, experts have a more elaborate and structured schema for educational content, and use fixed procedures and routines for educational methods. It has been clarified that there is a complex integration of teaching materials and techniques, and that there is complexity in knowledge. In addition, prior research on decision-making (Shavelon & Stern, 1981) has revealed that there are many procedures and strategies, but few goals. However, the content of proficiency in childcare professional development is not clearly indicated. This time, by structuring knowledge in a goal-oriented manner, we planned research to clarify each action of beginners and experts, and to search for tacit knowledge by structuring it in a certain way. Subjects: Two childcare workers with 2 years and 31 years of childcare experience who work at a free daycare kindergarten in B City, A Prefecture. Step 1: A 40-minute interview was conducted individually with each child in a conference room in the nursery school. First, we asked the question, ``What would you do for <do free daycare on a rainy day?> We proceeded with the interview while asking them to decide the subject of the action, the order of action, and so on.　Step 2: Each piece of knowledge used to achieve a goal was purpose-oriented and structured using a method developed by Nishimura et al. (Nishimura et al., 2013).[Results] By clarifying each action of childcare and structuring it in a goal-oriented manner, we were able to visualize strategies for achieving the goals of both beginner and expert. The beginner mentioned concrete methods. On the other hand, the structured knowledge of experts covered a wide range of areas of childcare, such as child assessment, how to deal with troubles, how to deal with parents, and kindergarten policies. It was thought that the knowledge of expert was wide and abundant. On the other hand, beginner was limited to specific childcare methods and temporary problem-solving methods. Expert are thought to integrate knowledge and procedural knowledge that they have acquired from past experience and adopt strategies to achieve their goals in a procedural manner. It is speculated that the strategy for problem solving is being elaborated in this. On the other hand, it was beginner tended to search for and implement concrete solutions to the problems in front of them. Previous studies have suggested the following. Beginners follow the superficial similarities of problems, but experts focus on the structural features of problems and use analogies effectively (Novick, 1988). Experts approach problems in a qualitatively different way than beginners Solving (Chi et al., 1988). Experts reason forward from the information given in the problem, whereas novices reason backwards (Patel & Groen, 1986). The present results are consistent with the suggestions of those previous studies.