Pre-Primary Educators' Work Stress, Work Satisfaction, and Practice: An International Comparison of Seven Countries

• In Event: Teacher Well-Being in Early Childhood Education: Essential Lessons From Large-Scale Studies

Abstract

Objectives

Early childhood educators’ psychological well-being is critical to their professional well-being as well as children’s positive developmental outcomes in early care and education (ECE) settings (Buettner et al., 2016; Jeon et al., 2019). To better understand the role of educators’ psychological well-being, this study explores the association between ECE educators’ psychological well-being, represented by the low levels of work stress, and their facilitation of children’s social-emotional development, via educators’ work satisfaction. In particular, the current study examines how these associations appear similarly and differently in seven countries.

Theoretical Framework

Job demands-resources (JD-R) theory (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017) suggests that employees under stress are likely to create job demands (i.e., characteristics of a job that require sustained efforts and energy), and subsequently become strained by their work. This unhealthy cycle may be related to decreased teacher performance, but also associated with employees’ satisfaction with work conditions, which in turn could undermine their job performance (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017). Based on JD-R theory, this study examines the role of ECE educators’ work stress in their work satisfaction and facilitation of children’s social-emotional development.

Methods/Data Sources

The OECD TALIS Starting Strong 2018 Survey was used. TALIS Starting Strong is a large-scale dataset focusing on ECE educators’ practices and well-being (OECD, 2019a). Surveys were administered to 9,700 educators working with pre-primary children of age 3 and higher in Chile, Germany, Israel, Japan, Korea, Norway, and Turkey. Educators’ work stress (12 items), satisfaction with work condition (7 items), and facilitation of children’s social-emotional development (12 items) were measured by teachers’ responses on surveys developed by OECD (2019b). Covariates included educators’ sex, age, years of ECE experiences, educational attainment, program sector (public/private), and proportions of disadvantaged children. Multiple-group path analysis with balanced repeated replication weights were used to estimate the associations among study variables.

Results

Descriptive statistics and multiple-group path analysis results are presented in Tables 1 and 2. Counterintuitively, work stress demonstrated positive direct association with facilitation of social-emotional development in Germany, Japan, and Korea. The association was non-significant in other countries. However, work stress was significantly and negatively associated with work satisfaction across, and work satisfaction was significantly and positively associated with educators’ facilitation of social-emotional development in all seven countries. Despite the lack of direct association, work stress had significant and negative indirect associations with educators’ facilitation of social-emotional development via work satisfaction across all countries.

Significance of the Study

The findings suggest that educators’ work stress and work satisfaction are important indicators of their facilitation of children’s social-emotional development across all seven countries. However, educators in different countries demonstrated different levels of associations among stress, work satisfaction, and practice, indicating that support for educators may need to account for cross-country variations. For example, work stress was more strongly associated with educator practice in Germany, Japan, and Korea, than four other countries. The findings suggest importance of providing context-specific policy and interventions to promote educators’ well-being in ECE settings.

Authors

• Sooyeon Byun, University of Virginia
  Presenting Author

• Lieny Jeon, University of Virginia
  Presenting Author