Workplace Social Support and Early Educators' Turnover Intentions

• In Event: Early Education Programs, Teacher Well-Being, and Children's Development

Abstract

The experiences young children receive in early childhood education (ECE) settings are critical for shaping their early development (Phillips et al., 2017), yet many of these benefits are contingent on early educators providing consistent and responsive interactions with children. Unfortunately, in the United States, ECE is a highly unstable profession, and ECE teachers leave their jobs at rates up to four times greater than those of K-12 teachers (Whitebook et al., 2014). To address turnover, policy has increasingly sought to professionalize the ECE workforce, particularly through increasing wages and education requirements (Institute of Medicine, 2015). Yet, there may be other aspects of teachers’ jobs—above and beyond compensation and training—that influence their intentions to remain at their program. For example, the Job Demands-Resources model (Demerouti et al., 2001) posits that individuals are more likely to experience burnout if they have inadequate resources to meet job demands.
The present study explores the contributions of one key job resource—workplace social support—to teachers’ turnover intentions. First, we explored teachers’ perceived relationships with program directors and other teachers, and their turnover intentions. We then tested the association between workplace social support and turnover intentions.
Data came from a workforce survey conducted in Spring 2019 across 26 school districts in a mid-Atlantic state. We surveyed 1,373 teachers in 183 community-based and 176 school-based programs working directly with children aged 0-5 for 30 or more hours per week (80% response rate). The majority of our sample was female (98%), white (73%), had less than a Bachelor’s degree (55%), and was the primary teacher of their classroom (73%). Previous studies sampling from this state have found that approximately 25% of programs report losing more than 20% of their teachers within a year.
On average, teachers reported moderate to high levels of social support (Table 1). Many teachers also expressed a strong intention to remain in ECE (43%; Table 2). Teachers felt more strongly about staying at their program in the near future (45%), but were less certain in their longer-term plans (30%). For the second research aim, we conducted linear probability models with rigorous controls, including hourly wage and other aspects of teachers’ jobs (see Table 3 notes). Results suggest that perceived social support—particularly from directors—modestly predicts turnover intentions. For example, a 1 SD increase in support from directors was associated with a 12 percentage-point increase in their confidence in staying at their program nine months later; to compare, increasing hourly wages by $1 was associated with only a one percentage-point increase.
Early educators are the central ingredient in young children’s development in ECE settings. Our results suggest that relationships among adults in ECE settings are a meaningful contributor to teachers’ intention to stay, suggesting that efforts focused on program climate and leadership may be fruitful; however, future research should explore whether support for teachers predicts observed turnover—not just intentions. To address this issue, we are currently tracking respondents’ employment status over time. Preliminary results will be available by April 2020.

Authors

• Justin Brian Doromal, University of Virginia

• Daphna Bassok, University of Virginia

• Anna J Markowitz, University of California Los Angeles