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Teachers' Perceptions Of Their Interactions With Shy Preschool Children: A Phenomenological Inquiry, Sara Swenson

College of Education and Human Sciences: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This study explored preschool teachers’ perceptions of their interactions with shy children in the classroom. A qualitative phenomenology was chosen to capture the experiences of the teachers and gain an understanding of the phenomena they experience in the classroom.

Shyness refers to an individual’s feelings of uneasiness or hesitation when faced with a novel or unfamiliar situation (Coplan and Armer, 2007). With about 40% of children being shy (Caspi, Edler, & Bem, 1988; Lazarus, 1982; Zimbardo, 1977) and with increasing numbers of children enrolling in preschool, looking at how shy children are perceived is key to beginning to understand how …