To Whom Little Is Given, Much Is Expected: ECE Workforce Supports and Wellbeing and the Classroom Processes They Drive

• In Event: 1-160 - ECE Workforce Supports, Experiences, and Wellbeing: Determinants and Consequences for Classroom Processes and Child Outcomes

Integrative Statement

The early care and education (ECE) workforce shapes the ECE environments in which many young children learn, grow, and get ready for school. Understandably, ECE teachers’ capacities to provide high-quality early learning environments are affected by the supports they receive and by their own wellbeing. This may be especially salient for teachers in publicly-funded ECE settings that serve low-income children, who enter the preschool classroom with elevated risks and needs – placing greater demand on their ECE teachers.

To date, little research has examined ECE teacher supports and wellbeing among publicly-funded center-based ECE settings that enroll low-income children. Even fewer studies have attempted to link such teacher variables to observed classroom processes, and none have done so across the range of publicly-funded ECE settings available to low-income families. Without this information, it is impossible to effectively target policies to promote successful teacher practice, teacher health and ultimately, child school readiness. The current study will begin to address this knowledge gap using newly available data collected in a range of public preschool classrooms serving low-income children in the 2017-2018 academic year.

Data were collected in Tulsa, OK from 113 ECE teachers in publicly-funded center-based preschool classrooms across 8 Head Start centers (25 classrooms), in 43 public schools (79 school-based pre-k classrooms), and in 9 classrooms in community-based centers serving children on federal child care subsidies. Teachers completed online surveys that included items measuring teacher physical health; mental health; economic wellbeing (income; receipt of public benefits; receipt of employer-provided health and retirement benefits); risk and stress in the teacher’s own environment (e.g., teacher’s own Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) in his/her own childhood; household chaos; household food insecurity); and availability of professional supports, professional development opportunities, and relationships with other staff and leadership. We also conducted detailed classroom observations in all 113 classrooms, using the Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS-Pre-k; Pianta, LaParo, & Hamre, 2008) and the Adapted Teaching Style Rating Scale (ATSRS; Raver, Domitrovitch, Greenberg, Morris, & Mattera, 2012). The CLASS generates scores for classroom emotional climate, classroom organization, and instructional quality and the ATSRS captures teacher practices around classroom structure and behavior management, emotional communication and support, and social awareness and problem solving. We would expect all of these classroom processes to be influenced by teacher experiences and wellbeing.

Data collection was completed in June 2018 and all data have been entered, quality-checked, and prepared for analysis. Data analysis will begin in September 2018 and will involve (1) generating descriptive statistics to document – for the first time - the comprehensive set of ECE teacher workplace support and wellbeing factors across the full range of publicly funded center-based ECE settings detailed above, including describing how teacher factors vary across ECE programs (e.g., Head Start versus pre-k); and (2) estimating OLS regression models predicting classroom process outcomes (CLASS and ATSRS scores) from the ECE workforce support and wellbeing factors explored in #1, controlling for family and teacher background characteristics and classroom composition variables that may confound associations between ECE workforce features and classroom processes.

Authors

• Anna Johnson, Georgetown University
  Presenting Author

• Owen Schochet, Georgetown University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Annie Partika, Georgetown University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sherri Castle, University of Oklahoma Tulsa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Diane Horm, University of Oklahoma, Tulsa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Deborah Phillips, Georgetown University
  Non-Presenting Author