An Exploration of the Impact of Class Sizes on the Effectiveness of Teaching in Early Years

The role of early childhood education has experienced a remarkable increase in prominence, with teachers playing a more pivotal role in enhancing teaching effectiveness. The education sector in the UAE education is evolving rapidly, especially in the early years stage. The increasing governmental and parental involvement in early childhood education has prompted new challenges, which also include class size, i.e. number of students in class. Early childhood education is different in terms of teaching and learning processes and thus requires different optimal class sizes for enhanced teaching effectiveness. The existing research has focused predominantly on measuring the prevalent class size and its impact on teaching effectiveness based on teachers’ perceptions and highlighting the difficulties and challenges teachers are facing. The findings are crucial for teachers, educationalists, and policymakers to theorize the role of class size in the ECE of Abudhabi. The following research focused on the impact of class size and teaching effectiveness along with consequent implications. The research concluded that class size significantly impacts teaching effectiveness collectively as well as on all constructs individually, namely, Perceived Teaching Effectiveness (TE), Student Engagement (SE), Teachers’ Job Satisfaction (JS), and Student Performance (SP). Large class sizes limit teaching effectiveness, while smaller class sizes were recorded to have significantly higher teaching effectiveness scores. Moreover, school resources in terms of teaching aids and technological resources were also found to positively impact teaching effectiveness in the context of class size.