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

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Abstract

In early care and education (ECE) settings, socially and emotionally healthy educators are essential to creating a positive climate and ultimately supporting young children’s development (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). Unfortunately, educators working in ECE settings typically experience low wages, challenging working conditions, and few professional supports (Jeon et all, 2018; Whitebook et al., 2014), and often struggle with stress and burn out. Moreover, disparities exist within this workforce, both across ECE settings and by teacher race/ethnicity, with evidnce suggesting that early educators of color-- who are essential for the increasingly diverse families of the United States-- earn less than their white counterparts.

The arrival of COVID-19 exacerbated many of these challenges, but also creates an opportunity to transform the US ECE system with an eye toward increasing equity for both children and educators. We engage this question through four papers. First, we explore how COVID-19 challenged the wellbeing of early educators, and how that varied by ECE type; second, we track differences in working conditions and well-being status between ECE and K-12 leaders; and third we consider the association between racial aggressions and perceived stress for teachers of different races. Finally, to better understand how different systems globally were able to manage COVID-19, we compare ECE work environments across seven countries and their associations with educators’ wellbeing. Together, these papers provide a sense of extant disparities within the ECE workforce, as well as suggest future directions for research and policy aimed toward achieving equity.

Sub Unit

• Education, Schooling

Chair

• Lieny Jeon, University of Virginia - Charlottesville

Individual Presentations

• Changes in Early Educators’ Financial and Emotional Wellbeing after COVID-19: Variability by Setting - Presenting Author: Anna Markowitz, University of California - Los Angeles; Isabelle Fares; Daphna Bassok, University of Virginia

• Unequal Pay for Equal Qualifications and Work: Working Conditions for Early Childhood and K-12 Leaders - Presenting Author: Kyong-Ah Kwon, University of Oklahoma; Timothy Ford, University of Oklahoma; Tom McHugh

• Early Childhood Educators’ Perceived Stress and Experiences of Racialized Aggression during the COVID-19 Pandemic - Presenting Author: Ayse Cobanoglu, Yale University; Walter S Gilliam

• Associations between Supportive Work Environment and Pre-Primary Educators’ Well-Being: An International Comparison of Seven Countries - Presenting Author: Sooyeon Byun, University of Virginia - Charlottesville; Lieny Jeon, University of Virginia - Charlottesville