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ERIC Number: EJ1470659
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2025-Jun
Pages: 15
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-1082-3301
EISSN: EISSN-1573-1707
Available Date: 2024-06-29
A Penguin Is Not a Giraffe: Categorizing Preschool Children According to Temperament
Jana Maine1; Timothy J. Huelsman2; Sandra Glover Gagnon2; Rose Mary Webb2; Pamela Kidder-Ashley2
Early Childhood Education Journal, v53 n5 p1807-1821 2025
Temperament is a widely researched trait that significantly influences children's lives. Still, theorists differ in their perspectives on the construct. With their nine dimensions of temperament and three "categories" of children--"easy," "difficult," or "slow to warm up"--Thomas and colleagues (1968) laid the foundation for future temperament research. Subsequent researchers have identified temperament profiles that are similar to but not completely consistent with Thomas and colleagues' model. Still, most conceptualizations exist primarily for researchers and may be challenging to translate for educators who work directly with children and their caregivers. Therefore, this study had two aims. First, we used cluster analysis to corroborate and extend research that categorized children into temperament groups. We identified four groups that converge and one group that diverges from previous findings. Our second, more important purpose was to strengthen the link between research and practice by conceptualizing our results in a way that is understandable to educators and caregivers. The challenging task of capturing the nature of each cluster in one or even a few words led us to adopt a zoomorphic approach in which we assigned nonhuman animal names to each group: koalas, penguins, dogs, bobcats, and giraffes. Our findings support previous groupings of children by temperament and provide a consumer-friendly model that facilitates communication between caregivers and educators.
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A
Author Affiliations: 1New Hanover County Schools, Wilmington, USA; 2Appalachian State University, Department of Psychology, Boone, USA