Table 4.

Perceived benefits of teacher registration by currently registered ECTs: Factor loadings and descriptive statistics

	Factor loadings	Descriptive statistics
	Benefits (α  = .93)	M	SD
Having a system of teacher registration has helped improve outcomes for young children	.82	3.22	1.14
Having a system of teacher registration has helped improve the quality of my teaching practice	.81	3.02	1.11
Having a system of teacher registration has helped improve the quality of ECEC services	.81	3.14	1.14
Having a system of teacher registration has helped improve the status of early childhood teachers	.72	3.29	1.26
Having to attain and maintain professional teacher registration:
…has increased my job satisfaction	.80	2.79	1.06
…has improved outcomes for the young children I work with	.79	3.04	1.12
…has supported my professionalism as a teacher	.78	3.46	1.03
…has meant that the level of quality ECEC provided at my service has improved	.77	2.93	1.03
a…is just a ‘tick the box’ exercise that I do so that I can keep practising as an ECT	−.68	3.07	1.20
…has increased recognition of the professional work that I do	.64	2.69	1.25
a…has decreased my job satisfaction	−.56	2.82	0.97
…means that my employer provides access to PD so that I can meet professional learning registration requirements	.55	3.12	1.21
a…is more about quality control than genuine quality improvement	−.53	3.27	1.04
…has led to an increase in my salary	.47	2.00	1.03
a…adds to regulatory burden because of the paperwork involved	−.47	3.73	1.02

PD professional development

Image factoring; listwise N = 402

All items were rated on a 5-point scale from 1: Strongly disagree, 2: Disagree, 3: Neither agree nor disagree, 4: Agree, 5: Strongly agree

^aItems reversed when creating factor score