About this session

Friday, 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Early Childhood Teacher Well-Being in Preschool, Head Start, Special Education, and Child Care

A qualified, supported early childhood education (ECE) workforce is a key ingredient in high quality ECE programs that support children’s learning and development (e.g., Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Whitaker et al., 2015). Increasingly, and in particular since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, ECE teachers report high levels of stress and burnout, and are leaving the field, creating staffing shortages for many ECE programs. This symposium brings together four papers that focus on determinants of ECE teacher well-being spanning before, during, and after the Covid-19 pandemic and covering four ECE sectors: Preschool, Head Start, Early Childhood Special Education (ECSE), and Child Care nationally and in one state. Study 1 (pre-Covid) explores how preschool teachers’ perceptions of school climate are associated with their depression and children’s developmental gains in one state’s high quality preschool program. Study 2 uses Head Start FACES data to explore how program supports such as wage increases and flexible scheduling are associated with teacher well-being (e.g., depression, anxiety, job satisfaction) during the Covid-19 pandemic. Study 3 uses data from a national survey of ECSE teachers (in 2022-2023) to explore their job-related stress, plans to leave the field, and professional development supports. Study 4 uses data from a statewide survey of lead teachers in licensed child care centers (in 2023-2024) to understand how workplace supports and stressors are associated with depression and turnover. Taken together, these four studies will elucidate the needs of the ECE workforce and discuss program and policy solutions to better support teacher well-being.

Paper #1
Title	Does Preschool Teacher Well-Being Mediate Associations Between Their Perceptions of School Climate and Child Development?
Presenting author	Jessica Siegel, New York University, United States

Paper #2
Title	Head Start Teacher’s Well-Being and Program Supports for Well-Being During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Presenting author	Jessica Harding, Ph.D., Mathematica, United States

Paper #3
Title	Work-Related Stress and Turnover Among Early Childhood Special Education Teachers
Presenting author	Dr. Allison Hope Friedman-Krauss, Ph.D., National Institute for Early Education Research/Rutgers University, United States

Paper #4
Title	Depression, Turnover and Workplace Supports and Stressors Among Child Care Lead Classroom Teachers
Presenting author	Andrea Kent, M.Ed., National Institute for Early Education Research & Teachers College, United States

View all paper details

Session chair
Marisa Schlieber, Ph.D., Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California, Berkeley, United States

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