The Experiences and Needs of Early Childhood Special Education Teachers for the Organizational Culture of Early Childhood Special Education Institutions

The purpose of this study is to examine the experiences and needs of early childhood special education teachers for the organizational culture of early childhood special education institutions. A focus group interview was conducted with 11 early childhood special education teachers working for special classes in kindergarten and special education kindergartens. As a result of the study, 3 themes, 11 subcategories, and 30 main concepts were derived. Specific research results are as follows. First, early childhood special education teachers presented four types of organizational culture experiences according to the differences in the method of pursuing values and flexibility of institutions. In other words, it is a relationship-oriented culture, a performance-oriented culture, a hierarchy-oriented culture, and a chaotic organizational culture that is difficult to be explained by the preceding three models. Second, early childhood special education teachers presented negative experiences with respect to organizational fairness such as mutual fairness, procedural fairness, and distribution fairness. Third, early childhood special education teachers said that it is necessary to make an active effort on their own to realize the unique identity of early childhood special education teacher along with the improvement of democratic and organizational culture. In addition, they emphasized the need for awareness-raising training for institutional members and securing fairness in the promotion system for early childhood special education teacher. Based on the results of this study, future improvement plans for the organizational culture of early childhood special education institutions were suggested.