Pre-service teachers' attitudes towards the role and function of touch in the early childhood classroom

The purpose of this research was to discover and explore pre-service teachers' perceptions of appropriate and inappropriate touch and the positive developmental and educational outcomes of appropriate touch in the early childhood classroom. It was intended to provide insight into the role of education, personal teaching philosophy, and previous child care experiences on pre-service teachers' attitudes toward touch. It was hypothesized that (a) pre-service teachers with more college education/ courses will have a more positive attitude towards touch, (b) those pre-service teachers with a social constructivist philosophy will have a more positive attitude towards touch, and ( c) pre-service teachers with previous teaching or volunteering experience in a day care center will have a more positive attitude towards touch. Surveys were distributed over the course of one academic year to 250 students enrolled in Introduction to Early Childhood Education (CFS 110) and Early Childhood Environments (CFS 350) at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. The Kruskal-Wallis and Spearman's Rho correlations were used to test the hypotheses. None of the three research hypotheses' received any support from the statistical tests and were therefore refuted.