A study on the Development and Validation of Disability Empathy Scales for Pre-Service Early Childhood Teacher

Abstract

This study aimed to develop and validate a tool that can measure the degree of empathy for disabilities of pre-service early childhood teachers. Through this, it is intended to improve the professionalism of pre-primary early childhood teachers related to inclusive education with disabilities. First, the conceptual definition of disability empathy was established through the search for prior research, preliminary questions were developed and tool validation was carried out. The survey was conducted with 209 university students majoring in early childhood education in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea. As a result of the study, the disability empathy scale consisted of 14 items with 3 factors, and the sub-factors were named cognitive empathy, emotional empathy, and expressive empathy. As a result of confirmatory factor analysis to confirm the internal factor structure of the disability empathy scale, it was found that the three-factor model adequately explains the data. Based on the study results, the significance and implications of the study were discussed.