Holistic Approaches to Key Early Care and Education Workforce Issues: Working Conditions, Well-Being, and Turnover Intent

• In Event: Global Perspectives on Early Care and Education (ECE) Workforce Well-Being and Working Conditions

Abstract

The Early Care and Education (ECE) workforce, including teachers and administrators, has experienced pressing challenges (e.g., high job demands), contributing to poor well-being and high turnover (Grant et al., 2019; Kwon et al., 2020). However, the existing literature has a narrow scope to examine working conditions, well-being, and turnover with a focus on teachers. From the Job Demands-Resources model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2017) and the triple-match principle (de Jonge & Dormann, 2006), we used a comprehensive measure of a broad range of job demands and resources and investigated their relations to the ECE teachers and leaders’ well-being and turnover intent.

Method

Our interdisciplinary research team collected online survey data on the background, working conditions, holistic well-being (physical, psychological, and professional well-being, called P3), and intent to leave from 2021-2022. Our analysis of ECE teacher and leader working conditions and P3 well-being consisted of 405 ECE leaders and 488 teachers who work in various early childhood education settings (e.g., child care, pre-K, Early Head Start/Head Start) from diverse racial/ethnic backgrounds.

We used comprehensive ECE working condition measures for early childhood teachers, including physical, cognitive/professional, and psycho-social demands and resources, and organizational resources, that were developed and validated by our research team (Authors, in preparation). The measures were modified to reflect the working conditions relevant for early childhood leaders. We also used various existing validated measures for P3 well-being and intent to leave of teachers and leaders (e.g., CESD, Andersen et al., 1994; TSES, Tschannen-Moran & Woolfolk-Hoy, 2001; SF-12 Health Survey, Ware et al., 2002). We conducted a series of regressions with overall physical well-being, depressive symptoms, self-efficacy, and intent to leave, while controlling for age, school tenure, race, gender, center type, and salary. Further, we will include the results of additional analysis (i.e., Latent Profile Analysis) to identify optimal combinations of working conditions contributing to teacher and leaders’ well-being.

Results and Implications

The key findings are presented in Tables 5 and 6. The teacher results demonstrate a general pattern of difference in significant effects for efficacy versus physical, psychological well-being, and intent to leave. Social support, workload, and emotional demands were associated with efficacy, while physical demands were associated with physical well-being. Emotional demands were also positively associated with depressive symptoms, while a positive public view of teachers was associated with improved well-being across the board. For leaders, workload, role ambiguity, and workplace conflict were negatively associated with well-being, while substantial financial and human capital resources were positively associated with well-being.

Findings overall indicate that workload and financial resources are significant predictors for multiple aspects of teachers’ and leaders’ well-being in common. However, emotional demands and public views on the early childhood profession appeared to be more consistently associated with teachers’ well-being and turnover intention than leaders. Our holistic and interdisciplinary approach sought a multifaceted view of ECE teachers’ and leaders’ health and well-being with the ultimate goal of understanding and supporting these educators with the tools to more effectively carry out the important work they do for children and families.

Authors

• Kyong-Ah Kwon, University of Oklahoma

• Timothy G. Ford, University of Oklahoma

• Wonkyung Jang, University of Oklahoma