Poster #69 - Beliefs About Stress Predict Retention Among Preschool Teachers

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - Education, Schooling

Integrative Statement

There is no question that teaching is a difficult occupation. Teachers of young children face challenges from poor work environments, low salary, low social status of the job, and relational problems with their co-workers, students and parents. Therefore, job turnover rate — annual number of teachers leaving their schools or centers — among child care and preschool teachers is very high.

Teacher turnover is economically, institutionally, and educationally costly. In addition, teacher turnover affects students. High turnover among experienced teachers who can provide comprehensive and coherent curriculum may weaken program quality (Hanushek, Kain, & Rivkin, 2004). Furthermore, children who have become attached to a teacher are distressed by the loss, and this could impair their cognitive development (Hale-Jinks, Knopf, & Knopf, 2006). When a teacher leaves, his or her students have to put extra energy into forming a secure attachment with their new teacher; this energy could have been used to explore and learn (Cryer, Hurwitz, & Wolery, 2001).

Why do teachers leave their jobs? Job stress is cited most often. Thus, every effort should be made to retain teachers by making their work less stressful. However, despite such efforts, some teachers will still leave. Even when people work in the same environment, they might be under different amounts of psychological distress.

The current longitudinal field study examined whether child care teachers’ stress mindsets—implicit beliefs about the effects of stress—predict their psychological distress, leading to job turnover within a year. Individuals who hold a strong stress-is-enhancing mindset believe that stress can facilitate learning, growth, health and vitality. In contrast, individuals who have a stress-is-debilitating mindset believe that stress inevitably leads poor performance and productivity and to the depletion of their health and vitality (Crum et al., 2013). We expected child care teachers with a stress-is-enhancing mindset to experience little job stress at the beginning of the school year, and would therefore be more likely to stay in their job at the end of the school year.

By examining over 300 Korea preschool teachers (N = 310), we found that teachers who believe in the potential benefit of stress experienced less job stress, making them less likely to leave their jobs within a school year. These findings suggest that teachers’ stress mindsets have significant effects on teachers’ psychological well-being and professional development.

Author

• Daeun Park, Chungbuk National University
  Presenting Author