Associations between Supportive Work Environment and Pre-Primary Educators’ Well-Being: An International Comparison of Seven Countries

• In Event: Towards Health Equity: Examining Disparities in Early Childhood Educators’ Well-Being and Working Conditions

Abstract

In early care and education (ECE) settings, educators’ well-being is important to provide high-quality practice for children across various countries (e.g., Byun et al., 2022). However, ECE educators in different national contexts experience differential types and degrees of work-related challenges (OECD, 2020). Due to this cross-country variation, educators in different context may need different support to maintain the adequate level of well-being. The Self-Determination Theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 2012) suggests that, when greater support for autonomy, competence, and relatedness are provided at the workplace, educators can have higher levels of intrinsic motivation for work, which is likely to be associated with their well-being. However, given the variations in experiences of ECE educators in different countries, the associations between supportive work environment and educators’ well-being may also appear differently across national settings. To better understand the similarities and differences between supportive work environment and well-being in various settings, this study examines how indicators of supportive environment suggested by SDT (i.e., autonomy, competence, and relatedness) are associated with educators’ well-being in ECE settings in seven countries.

We used the data from the OECD’s TALIS Starting Strong 2018 Survey, collected from 9,700 ECE educators across seven countries. Educators’ well-being was measured by job satisfaction (7-item scale) and work stress (12-item scale); autonomy was measured by a single item asking if the ECE leadership encourages all staff to have a say on important decisions; competence was measured by educator-perceived needs for professional development (PD) (5-item scale); and relatedness was measured by educators’ engagement with collaborative practices (7-item scale). All scale scores were developed and computed by OECD (2018). Educators’ sex, age, years of ECE experiences, educational attainment, program sector (public/private), and proportions of disadvantaged children in the program were included as covariates. Associations were examined using multiple regression analyses with balanced repeated replication (BRR) weights, using Stata 17’s repest module.

Results indicate that autonomy is the strongest predictor of educators’ job satisfaction. Needs for PD and collaboration had substantial cross-country variations in its associations with job satisfaction. For work stress, autonomy was the significant predictor in most countries, except for Israel. The association between needs for PD and stress was also significant in most countries, except for Japan. The association between collaboration and stress had more cross-country variations. It is noteworthy that Japanese educators’ needs for PD was not associated with neither job satisfaction nor stress. Furthermore, collaborative educators experienced higher levels of job satisfaction in Chile, Germany, Norway and Turkey but the association was non-significant in Israel, Japan, and Korea. Meanwhile, collaborative educators experienced higher levels of work stress in Israel, Japan, and Korea but the association was, again, non-significant in other four countries.

These findings suggest that, consistent with SDT, ECE work environment promoting educators’ autonomy, competence, and relatedness is important to their well-being. However, to ensure equally positive states of well-being among ECE educators across diverse contexts, differential intervention and policy strategies may be needed.

Authors

• Sooyeon Byun, University of Virginia - Charlottesville
  Presenting Author

• Lieny Jeon, University of Virginia - Charlottesville