Skills in Preschool Education Students: Construction and Validation of a Questionnaire

The present research puts into perspective the relationship of soft or transversal skills in the formation of a specific pedagogy. This article presents the construction process, types of validation, difficulty analysis, discrimination, and reliability of the Soft Skills in Early Childhood Education Questionnaire SS-ECE to assess the prevalence of soft skills in early childhood education students from two universities in Chile. The development phases included the review of the graduate profile of the program of study, development of dimensions and items, procedure and participants, construction of last version, pilot study. From the psychometric analyses, a reliable and valid questionnaire was obtained, with appropriate discrimination and difficulty indexes. The last version of the questionnaire consisted of forty-one items with five dimensions: social-emotional skills, professional ethics, problem solving, teamwork and communication skills. The different theoretical and methodological phases provide certainty about their ability to assess in a valid and reliable way the soft skills of future early childhood education teachers.

Kimelfe