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This international study compared motivational tendencies among pre-school children from Israel, Finland and the Netherlands. Teachers were asked to rate students' behaviours during semi-structured tasks using the Child Behaviour Motivational Scale (CBeMo) which measures task orientation, task avoidance, and social dependence. Motivational tendencies for 472 children, ages 4-6 were compared by country, age, and gender. Results showed that Israeli children displayed lower levels of task avoidance and social dependence than European children at both ages 4 and 5. Israeli 4-year-olds showed high levels of task orientation similar to the 5-year-olds in the three countries. In all three groups, girls exhibited higher levels of task orientation than boys. Differences in motivational tendencies may result from cultural characteristics, while consistent differences between boys and girls may indicate universal gender influences. Understanding young children's motivational tendencies may contribute to the development of teaching practices that support children's positive dispositions towards learning tasks.

It is a challenge for an early education teacher to enhance the development of self-regulation of young children to become and stay motivated for tasks that elicit school-related skills that do not immediately make sense for them. Being aware of motivational orientations in young students is therefore a must. In the study, a cross-cultural evaluation was undertaken of a model for these orientations which were task orientation, task avoidance and social dependence. The study validated a Finnish questionnaire on motivation among Dutch students and addressed the underlying structure of the questionnaire. The Dutch sample included 266 students from kindergarten with an average age of 63?months, and the Finnish sample had 139 students from 16?day care centres with an average age of 62?months. The factor analysis showed that the model for three motivational orientations can be accepted for the Dutch population without restrictions. The findings also suggest age-relatedness with regard to task orientation, which was the highest among the six-year olds, and task avoidance and social dependence that were highest with the four-year olds of the Dutch sample. The results revealed that five-year olds were rated alike in Finland and the Netherlands for task orientation and task avoidance. Moreover, in both countries, girls received significantly higher scores than boys on task orientation, whereas boys were rated to show significantly more often task avoidance than girls in crafts and play-like tasks in preschool settings. The findings strengthen the validity of the questionnaire in two European countries that differ with regard to their early childhood education system. It is concluded that motivational tendencies are developing well before the start of Grade 1, and can be observed by preschool teachers. Suggestions for school practice are included.

This study explores educators' reflections on professional childcare practice in different national contexts. The data were collected by showing video clips of classroom activities in Japanese, Dutch and German pre-schools to experienced German and Dutch pre-school teachers. The clips were used to elicit their opinions on playing and learning in educational settings through a standardized questionnaire completed immediately after viewing each clip. The participants were also invited to rate the strength of cognitive, social, physical and emotional developmental domains during the activity. These data were analysed by classifying the questionnaire responses into four categories: remarks related to teachers, to children, to peers and to context. The frequencies of the categories and the ratings of developmental domains were computed and compared by t-tests between the German and the Dutch sample. The findings revealed that pre-school teachers offered more elaborated perspectives on the content of the foreign video clips than on the clips from their own country. There were also some differences with regard to developmental domains. With regard to pre-school teacher training it was concluded that the teachers' knowledge base should be used as an input for their professional practice. (Contains 1 figure, 3 tables and 1 note.)