Key Factors in Early Childhood Teachers’ Professional Development in Shandong Province: A Multivariate Analysis

Abstract

The strategic shift in China's preschool education from scale expansion to quality improvement has made teachers' professional competence a major barrier to advancing high-quality education. This study employed multivariate difference analysis to methodically investigate the ways in which four important factors, teacher qualifications, the frequency of quarterly training, the size of the kindergarten, and the leadership style of the director, differentially affect the professional knowledge, teaching behavior, and teaching innovation capabilities of preschool teachers. 500 in-service preschool teachers were surveyed using a questionnaire, and the study used stratified random sampling with Linyi, Weifang, and Jining as the empirical field in Shandong Province, China. The data were processed using multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA). The findings demonstrate that the most powerful and all-encompassing factor influencing teachers' professional development is the frequency of quarterly training; the leadership style of a transformational director is considerably superior to that of transactional and servant leadership in terms of encouraging teachers' knowledge depth, optimising interactive behaviour, and stimulating innovation willingness; teachers' educational background significantly predicts knowledge reserves and innovation potential but has no direct significant impact on daily teaching behaviour; and kindergarten size has no statistically significant impact on teachers' professional development. This study demonstrates that soft power development, exemplified by leadership and training programs, is significantly more beneficial than merely making large-scale investments.