Date of Award

9-5-2024

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Child Development

First Advisor

Crystasany Turner

Second Advisor

Amanda Moreno

Abstract

The early childhood workforce faces many unique challenges which have exacerbated educators’ already high levels of workplace stress and turnover. Despite such system-wide issues, there are many thriving early childhood programs that cultivate environments that promote positive professional well-being for early childhood educators. This mixed methods sequential explanatory study examined the experiences and elevated the voices of early childhood educators to explore their perceptions of how their administrators relate to their workplace well-being. Using an online survey and semi-structured interviews, findings indicated that teachers’ perceptions of administrators’ leadership style, trust level and congruence to ideal relate to educators’ workplace stress and commitment levels. Further, this study found that teachers who had higher levels of workplace stress and lower levels of job commitment described their administrators as overlooking their needs whereas teachers who had lower levels of workplace stress and higher levels of job commitment described their administrators as acknowledging their needs. Although administrators could not “solve” every issue teachers faced, educators recognized the efforts that their leaders made to buffer their workplace stress, even amidst the various pressures that leaders themselves faced. This study adds to the limited early childhood leadership literature as it conceptualizes the relationship between early childhood administrators and educators’ workplace well-being.

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