Predictors of Kindergarten Teacher Job Satisfaction and Its Effects on Child Academic and Social Skill Development

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

Abstract

Understanding predictors and effects of teacher wellbeing, including job satisfaction, is crucial for both teachers’ and children’s development. Research on teacher job satisfaction and wellbeing has indicated that many factors may make a difference on teachers’ professional wellbeing (e.g. administration, salary, working conditions, and colleagues), which in turn matters for their teaching practices (Carroll et al., 2021) and ultimately for students’ academic outcomes (Michaelowa, 2002) and social-emotional learning (Morris et al., 2014). Importantly, poor job satisfaction is linked to high possibility of turnover (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2017; Greenberg et al., 2016). However, less attention has been paid to reveal whether teachers’ job satisfaction is related to students’ outcomes, including academic and social skills development. In the current study, we used Early Childhood Longitudinal Studies- Kindergarten (ECLS-K:2011) national dataset. This large-scale study is nationally representative of American children who began kindergarten in 2011. We sought to ask: What are the predictors of kindergarten teachers’ job satisfaction and what associations does job satisfaction have with children’s academic and social skills development, accounting for a variety of relevant background factors?

Methods
We selected the following variables in Spring 2011: teacher job satisfaction (teacher enjoys teaching, teacher would teach again, and teacher makes a difference), school culture (school mission, staff fidelity and cooperation, teacher’s sense of acceptance and respect, and staff’s learning atmosphere), student misbehavior (child misbehavior interferes with teaching), and student incapacity (many of the children are not capable of learning the material). The outcome variables are students’ academic performance in literacy and math, as well as social skills (self-control, interpersonal skills, approaches to learning, external behavior, and internal behavior) assessed by the teachers, in both Fall 2010 and Spring 2011.

Findings
Final results will employ path modeling in Mplus, but preliminary analyses were conducted in SPSS. Analysis found that: (1) school culture (β=.26), parent support (β=.12), child incapacity (β=-.16), child misbehavior (β=-.05), and teacher collaboration (β=.03) all significantly predict teacher job satisfaction (p<.001 for all). Further, (2) controlling for children’s socioeconomic status and social skills in Fall, teacher job satisfaction significantly (p<.001) though with small associations explains children’s social skills in Spring, interpersonal skills (β=.06), self control (β=.05), approaches to learning (β=.05), external problem behaviors (β=-.03), and internal problem behaviors (β=-.03). The effect of teacher job satisfaction is even greater than that of SES on three social skills. Surprisingly, (3) we found that teacher job satisfaction did not explain children’s academic skills (p>.1).

Significance
Findings suggest possibilities of increasing teacher job satisfaction by improving the culture of teachers’ workplace, parent involvement, and proper class arrangement based on child ability. Furthermore, analysis indicates mild effects of teacher job satisfaction on all the four dimensions of children’s social skills development. This contributes to current literatures on the importance of emphasizing teacher wellbeing for creating a better early education ecosystem for child development.

Authors

• Qiling Wu, Temple University
  Presenting Author

• Annemarie H. Hindman, Temple University
  Non-Presenting Author