Poster #25 - A Person-centered Approach to Job Demands and Job/personal Resources in Kindergarten Teachers: Implications for Well-being

• In Event: Poster Session 08

Abstract

Early childhood educators’ (ECEs) well-being plays a crucial role in their teaching quality, interaction with children, and retention/turnover intention (Cassidy et al., 2016; Logan et al., 2000; Phillips et al., 2016). The job demands-resources (JD-R) model suggests that low job demands and high job/personal resources are conducive to employees’ well-being and job performance, while high demands and low resources undermine well-being and performance (Bakker & Demerouti, 2014; Bakker & Demerouti, 2017). Studies have found that ECEs typically face heavy job demands (e.g., heavy workload) and low job (e.g., insufficient support) and personal (e.g., efficacy) resources, all of which have implications on ECEs’ well-being (Li et al., 2021; Li & Zhang, 2019; Linton et al., 2016; Travis et al., 2016). However, most of the existing studies are variable-centered and focus on a few well-being aspects at a time, thus failing to capture the complicated patterns of job demands and job/personal resources and their implications to a holistic picture of well-being. In this research, we employ person-centered approach to explore subpopulations characterized by different levels of job demands, job resources, and personal resources, and examine the extent to which these subgroups differ in various types of well-being.
A total of 1,087 kindergarten teachers from four cities (i.e., Guangzhou, Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Zhuhai) participated in this study. They completed measures that assessed their job demands (i.e., quantitative demands, cognitive demands, emotional demands), job resources (i.e., quality of leadership, social support from supervisors or colleagues, influence at work, sense of community at work), and personal resources (i.e., self-control, self-efficacy, resilience). They also reported on their occupational, psychological, subjective, and physical well-being. We first conducted latent profile analysis (LPA) to explore different profiles with job demands, job resources and personal resources as indicators. We then performed MANOVA and MANCOVA analyses to examine the differences in well-being across profiles.
The results of LPA suggested a 4-profile model (Figure 1). These profiles are named the at-risk profile (characterized as high demands and low resources), the safeguarded profile (characterized as low demands and high resources), the undemanded profile (characterized as low demands with moderate self-control, resilience, and sense of belonging), and the overwhelmed learners profile (characterized as high demands, moderate job resources and low self-control and resilience). Moreover, the results of MANOVA indicated that the four profiles differed in various aspects of well-being (Table 1). In general, the at-risk profile shows worst well-being (i.e., low/high levels on positive/negative well-being indicators) while the safeguarded profile show best well-being (i.e., high/low levels on positive/negative well-being indicators). As a robust check, results of MACNOVA showed similar findings after controlling for a number of demographic variables (e.g., teaching experience, class size, etc.).
In conclusion, this study reveals the complicated patterns of job demands and job/personal resources and their implications to well-being in ECEs, advancing the application of JD-R model in the early childhood teaching profession. More importantly, these findings identify the subgroups who are in dire need of support and inform prevention and intervention strategies to enhance ECEs’ overall well-being.

Authors

• YU XU, The Education University of Hong Kong
  Presenting Author

• Rui ZHANG, University of Hong Kong (HKU)

• SHIQI QIU, The Education University of Hong Kong

• JIN SUN, Education University of Hong Kong

• Jianbin Li, The Education University of Hong Kong