ABSTRACT
The educational beliefs of familial and institutional educators of preschool children from the former East and West Germany were compared in this study. In addition to common German patterns, we looked for divergent beliefs as a result of political, ideological and educational separation over the past fifty years. In the former East Germany, there was a strong political and ideological influence on the educational field based on the political goal of the state to develop a socialistic personality in children. Although we are reluctant to identify the East/West educational belief differences as culturally specific, we try to compare them through a combination of exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis procedures. Results show that only a part of the investigated educational beliefs can be meaningfully compared in the the areas of cognitive skills as educational goals and controlling educational practices. Eastern and western pre-school educators share the view that these educational goals are rather unimportant for their work with children. No definite statements could be made with regard to other educational goals and practices investigated because of uncomparable (items relationships and) factor structures within the samples. The low degree of overlap of scale items demonstrates the need for indepth investigation of indigenous East- and West-German ideas with regard to the child as an autonomous individual and his/her functioning as a part of social group. The results are important with regard to both methodological aspects of East-West comparisons within the same “culture” as well as for curricula and training programs within the field of preschool education.
