A Comparative Study On Work Stress,Burnout And Teacher-child Relationships

With the acceleration of industrialization in developing countries,the career of early childhood education(ECE)teachers has developed rapidly.It is evident that teachers' work stressors,work resources and work burnout are mostly captured in the existing literatures,however,early childhood teachers' job characteristics,work stress and burnout are rarely covered.Also,there is extensive focus on gender and racial differences between teachers and children,and school organizational characteristics such as classroom space,teacher-child ratio,and teachers' working conditions in teacher child relationship(TCR)literature,while limited attention has been paid to the relationships between TCR and early childhood teachers' work stressors,work resources and burnout,especially,cross-cultural empirical research has not yet been reported.This study employs the job demand resource(JDR)theory,undergirded by the stressor-strain-outcome theoretical framework,to reaffinn and extend the work-related stressors-TCR links,with rigorous statistical analysis.Sampling structure is formed on the basis of rural and urban population distribution,and school type.Survey questionnaires and qualitative interview guide were employed for data collection.All the research participants were provided with gift tokens as a show of appreciation for their participation in the study.The study analysis consists three parts:Part 1:Analysis of work stressors,work resources,burnout and teacher-child interaction status.With descriptive statistics,this paper presents the basic characteristics of work stressors,work resources,burnout and teacher-child interaction of early childhood teachers in the two countries.It further explores these concepts' relations with teacher demographics,job characteristics and anthropometries,and describes the trends in stressors,resources and burnout across the groups of socio-demographics.Part 2:Assessment of measurement psychometric characteristics of work stress,burnout and teacher-child interaction.The study applied exploratory factor analysis(EFA),and confirmatory factor analysis(CFA)to obtain measurement items with 4 criteria:(a)items are accorded with theoretical significance,(b)obtain minimum loadings(EFA:.40 and CFA:.50 or greater),(c)items with cross-loadings and low loadings(below the threshold)were dropped,and(d)intercepts of non-invariant items were freely estimated across groups(during latent mean comparison).In addition,construct discriminant and convergent validity,and item internal consistencies were examined.Part 3:The influence of work stressors on TCR and the mediating and moderating mechanisms of burnout and job resources.Using a structural equation modelling,the study explored(1)the association between work-related stressors(i.e.,emotional demand,work-family conflict,workload,and role conflict)and TCR,(2)the direct effect of burnout on TCR,(3)mediating mechanism of burnout in the stressor-TCR relations,and(4)the non-linear(curvilinear)relation between the direct effect of emotional demand on conflict TCR.Main results:(1)The research tool has transnational applicability and stability.On the basis of national conditions consistency(China and Ghana),the revised questionnaire still maintains good measurement reliability and validity,with stable structure.(2)Conditions of workplace stressors and resources and symptoms of burnout varied significantly across China and Ghana,and such differences are shown in teacher demographics and job characteristics.(3)There is obvious interaction relationship between work stressors,work resources and TCR closeness and conflict in the two countries,which verify the relationships in the structural model.(4)The study reveals common emotional demand stressors and TCR conflict curvilinear relationship in the two countries,and it is more obvious and stable in China.(5)There are different work experience and incidents of stress in the two countries High workload and work-family conflict are significantly associated with close and conflict TCR in the Chinese group,while emotional demand,role conflict and work-family conflict related significantly with close and conflict TCR in the Ghanaian group.Burnout was found to exert significant mediation in the direct stressors-TCR relations.(6)Teacher child interaction could be optimized by appropriate work resources and intervention on work stressors,thereby ameliorating teacher burnout.