Early childhood teachers' stress and children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning

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Highlights

  • Teachers' cumulative stress was associated with children's social-emotional learning.

  • Lead teachers' personal stress increased the likelihood of child's anger-aggression.

  • Lead teachers' work stress increased the likelihood of child's anxiety-withdrawal.

  • Assistant teachers' work stress was associated with child's social competence.

Abstract

Early childhood teachers play a key role in promoting children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning. We investigated how preschool lead and assistant teachers' personal and job-related stress are, collectively and separately, associated with their perceptions of children's anger-aggression, anxiety-withdrawal, and social competence. Using a sample of 103 teachers from 54 classrooms serving 329 children, we conducted three-level multilevel analyses. Lead and assistant teachers' cumulative personal stress was significantly associated with teachers' evaluations of children's anger-aggression, and cumulative job-related emotional exhaustion was significantly associated with teachers' evaluations of children's anxiety-withdrawal and social competence. Exploring lead and assistant teachers' stress separately, the results showed that lead teachers with higher levels of stress perceived children as having higher levels of anger-aggression and anxiety-withdrawal. On the other hand, assistant teachers' stress was associated with teacher-reported children's social competence. We suggest ways to support children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning through intervening with teachers' stress.

Introduction

Children significantly expand their abilities to interact and build relationships with others and to control their behaviors and emotions during their preschool years (Denham et al., 2012; Domitrovich, Cortes, & Greenberg, 2007). Preschool-aged children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning, in turn, contribute to their school readiness as well as to their later development (CASEL, 2013; Darling-Churchill & Lippman, 2016; Denham, 2006). When children are more socially and emotionally ready to enter formal school, they tend to adapt better, which coincides with fewer behavioral problems, fewer crimes, and higher rates of graduation and employment (Raver, 2003; Schweinhart & Weikart, 1981). In the current study, we seek to understand better how lead and assistant teachers' stress, collectively and separately, are associated with their perceptions of children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning in early care and education (ECE) settings.

It is well known that the quality of ECE influences children's social and emotional development (Burchinal, Peisner-Feinberg, Bryant, & Clifford, 2000; Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2001). Specifically, ECE programs having better structural quality (e.g., having smaller teacher-to-child ratios and class sizes, teachers with higher educational attainment and training, more administrative support, etc.) have been shown to promote children's social and emotional development (Burchinal, Cryer, Clifford, & Howes, 2002). In addition, process quality in the classroom, represented by teachers' sensitivity, responsiveness, positive interactions, emotional support, and instructional support, stimulates children's development (Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2001). Although it is widely understood that children's social and emotional learning is supported by teachers' abilities to create a positive classroom climate for learning and nurturing, there has been less study of the role of teachers' own emotional health in children's development. This is a concern because early childhood teachers often report that they are highly stressed (McGinty, Justice, & Rimm-Kaufman, 2008).

Stress is an individual's emotional state caused by exposure to acute and chronic adverse experiences (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983; Roberti, Harrington, & Storch, 2006). In addition to experiencing personal stress, teachers are also likely to experience emotional exhaustion in their work when the demands of the job exceed their resources and introduce conflicts and burdens (Lazarus, 1993). Teachers' personal stress and job-related emotional exhaustion inhibit their abilities to provide consistent emotional support and positive behavior management that children need for their positive social-emotional development (Hamre, 2014). For example, teachers who experience higher stress have less teaching and nurturing capacity to model positive emotions and to foster a positive classroom climate (Lazarus, 2006; Zinsser, Bailey, Curby, Denham, & Bassett, 2013). In addition, teachers with higher levels of stress display more negative reactions to children's emotions or challenging behavior and have more conflict with the children in their classroom (Buettner, Jeon, Hur, & Garcia, 2016; Kokkinos, Panayiotou, & Davazoglou, 2005; Whitaker, Dearth-Wesley, & Gooze, 2015). Jennings and Greenberg (2009) suggest that teachers' social and emotional competence contributes to the social and emotional learning environment, and that this aspect of teachers' work warrants further study to better support children's social and emotional development. The main goal of this study, therefore, is to explore associations between teachers' personal stress and job-related emotional exhaustion and their perception of children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning.

Unlike K-12 classrooms, most preschool classrooms have two or more teachers working together with the children simultaneously. Although the teaching structure may vary by program (co-teaching structure or hierarchical structure), all teachers in the classroom influence children's development (Wells, 2017). For example, lead teachers mainly take a role leading learning activities while assistant teachers monitor children's behaviors. Alternatively, lead teachers primarily work with the whole group of children as assistant (or co-lead) teachers support smaller groups or an individual child who needs extra help. Although assistant teachers also spend significant time with children, few studies have examined both lead and assistant teachers' perspectives. In addition, no studies we know of have explored whether lead and assistant teachers' stress is cumulatively associated with their perceptions of children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning.

Preschool teachers report that they receive the most support from the teachers with whom they share a classroom (Wells, 2017). When both lead and assistant teachers are stressed, they are less likely to be able to seek help from each other. This lack of support may impact the whole classroom climate, which potentially hampers children's learning. In addition, children may receive social and emotional support from any teacher in the classroom when the cumulative stress level is high. When one of the teachers in the classroom is less tolerant and sensitive, it is critical to have another adult available to respond to children's needs. To capture the holistic picture of what children may experience in the classroom, we studied lead and assistant teachers' stress cumulatively. Furthermore, we investigated how lead and assistant teachers' stress is differently associated with their perceptions' of children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning, understanding that each teacher has unique roles in the classroom.

Teacher-perceived personal stress and job-related emotional exhaustion contribute to teachers' capabilities of creating a positive classroom. Buettner et al. (2016) found that teachers' stress was significantly associated with teachers' lower professional commitment and negative responsiveness towards children's emotions. In addition, Whitaker et al. (2015) found that teachers' higher levels of work stress were associated with more conflicts with children in their classroom, reported by teachers. Furthermore, early childhood educators' job-related stress was associated with lower observed emotional support for children (Zinsser et al., 2013), lower quality practices in literacy and numeracy, as well as decreased and lower quality communication with parents (Fantuzzo et al., 2012); a cumulative index of personal stressors was related to lower quality behavior management in the classroom (Li Grining et al., 2010). Although there has been evidence that teachers' stress impacts the way that teachers support children's learning, there are no studies, to our knowledge, that have investigated the associations between teachers' stress and their perceptions of preschool-aged children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning. Although previous studies have found that teachers' depression is associated with children's behavioral problems (e.g.,Jeon, Buettner, & Snyder, 2014; Roberts, LoCasale-Crouch, Hamre, & DeCoster, 2016), teachers' stress and depression may have a different impact in classrooms. In addition, teachers' stress has been found to be more prevalent than depressive symptoms in ECE (Whitaker et al., 2015).

In K-12 classrooms, teaching has been well documented as a profession of high stress that requires teachers to develop coping skills (Kyriacou, 2001; Montgomery & Rupp, 2005). Higher teacher stress has been linked to lower satisfaction and greater teacher turnover (Jones & Youngs, 2012), which impacts organizational functioning (Ronfeldt, Loeb, & Wyckoff, 2012). More directly, increased stress and emotional exhaustion have been shown to negatively affect K-12 classroom quality (Byrne, 1994), as well as students' outcomes, such as standardized test scores, grades, and perceptions of support from teachers (Arens & Morin, 2016). Further, Siekkinen et al. (2013) found that kindergartener teachers who reported higher levels of work-related stress were more likely to report higher impulsivity and lower levels of social skills in children. Studies of the mechanisms behind these relationships have found that more emotionally exhausted teachers are less likely to commit to their work, less likely to employ effective instructional methods (Klusmann, Kunter, Trautwein, Lüdtke, & Baumert, 2008), and more likely to withdraw from relationships with their students (Chang, 2009), which in turn, predict lower levels of student developmental outcomes (Arens & Morin, 2016). Likewise, more stressed teachers may report that their preschool-age children display lower levels of social, emotional, and behavioral functioning, which may be due to the less than optimal social and emotional learning environments that the teachers are cultivating, or teachers' distorted perceptions of children's behavior precipitated by their own stress.

The current study examines children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning using teachers' report of anger–aggression (externalizing symptoms), anxiety–withdrawal (internalizing symptoms), and social competence. First, anger–aggression captures children's abilities to recognize their own emotions, to understand others' emotions, to regulate their own emotions, and to control their attention and behavior (Halle & Darling-Churchill, 2016; LaFreniere & Dumas, 1996). Children who have higher levels of anger–aggression tend to express negative affect, defiance, and anger in frustrating situations (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1996). Previous studies show that children with more externalizing problems are more likely to manifest conduct disorder, difficulties in maintaining relationships with others, and lower levels of academic achievement in their later life (Lee, 2010). In addition, LaFreniere and Dumas (1996) point out that children with high levels of anger–aggression are more likely to be rejected by peers because they often hurt or disturb others' feelings by negatively displaying their emotions. During preschool years, teachers play a critical role in cultivating children's behavior through adequately intervening with challenging behaviors (Pianta, La Paro, & Hamre, 2008).

Second, anxiety–withdrawal captures the extent of children's anxiety, sadness, depressive symptoms, and worry (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1996). Children with high levels of anxiety–withdrawal more easily tire or withdraw from social situations and demonstrate lower levels of engagement in social relationships or learning activities (Eisenberg et al., 2001). In a preschool context, these children are prone to play alone, seek continuous and intensive attention from teachers, and easily give up when regular assurance is not provided by adults (LaFreniere & Dumas, 1996). Compared to children with externalizing behavior problems, children who have internalizing symptoms often receive less attention from teachers because their problems are less apparent and more difficult to detect (Berg-Nielsen, Solheim, Belsky, & Wichstrom, 2011). However, preschool children's internalizing behaviors are associated with lower language and literacy performance, indicating that these children may be at greater risk of school failure than those with externalizing behavior problems (Bulotsky-Shearer, Fernandez, Dominguez, & Rouse, 2011). Thus, teachers' sensitivity is critical to identify and support children who are anxious and withdrawn.

Finally, social competence is defined as how effectively children communicate and make connections with others, how well they cooperate and adjust their behavior to adapt to various social contexts, and how well they recognize social cues and engage in interactions (Halle & Darling-Churchill, 2016). Children with higher levels of social competence are more likely to exhibit positive adaptation in the transition to formal schooling than those who lack social competence because they are more flexible about societal demands and have greater problem-solving abilities (Denham, 2006; Raver & Zigler, 1997). Consequently, teachers' guidance is important to helping young children learn social cues and problem-solving skills that will serve them in future contexts (Denham, Bassett, & Zinsser, 2012).

The current study examines associations between teachers' stress and their perceptions of children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning. There are several possible mechanisms by which teachers' stress could be associated with children's social, emotional and behavioral functioning. First, teachers who are stressed may engage less with children in learning activities. Preschool-aged children develop their social skills, emotional competence, and positive behaviors while they engage in teacher-led activities and exploration of their social and physical environments during free play. Pianta et al. (2008) suggests that it is important for preschool teachers to continuously engage children in diverse activities to promote children's developmental outcomes. Stressed and emotionally exhausted teachers tend to have less energy or attention to devote to their students' needs and continued work demands, and often appear to be angry, frustrated, tired, anxious, or guilty (Blase, 1986; Chang, 2009; Jones & Youngs, 2012). They may not, therefore, have the physical and emotional capacity to engage children fully and in a sustained fashion. For example, using a person-centered approach, Jeon, Buettner, and Hur (2016) found that a group of teachers who were more stressed and less satisfied with their job demonstrated lower levels of instructional support in preschool classrooms. In addition, Ota, Baumgartner, and Berghout Austin (2012) studied 39 child-care providers who serve preschool-aged children and found that more stressed teachers were less likely to engage children during observed free play. A lack of opportunities to engage in various activities interferes with children's development of social competence and other positive behaviors (Denham, Bassett, Mincic, et al., 2012).

Second, teachers may be less sensitive to children's needs when they are stressed. Teachers' sensitivity is considered to be one of the most important factors in high quality early childhood classrooms (Pianta et al., 2008). In order to fulfill children's emotional needs, teachers need to be aware of potential problems, recognize a child's emotions, and provide comfort, assistance, and individualized support (Pianta et al., 2008). Chang (2009) suggests that teachers' abilities to be attentive to children's emotional needs decrease when they experience job-related emotional exhaustion. In addition, people become less empathetic when they experience stress and burnout (Lazarus, 1993). Teachers need to employ empathy to respond constructively to children's negative emotions in order to promote children's emotional competence (Denham, Bassett, & Zinsser, 2012). Teachers' positive contingent reactions towards children's negative emotions help children develop their abilities to reflect their own emotions, regulate their emotions, and understand others' emotions (Denham, Bassett, & Zinsser, 2012). However, teachers who report higher levels of psychological load (stress, emotional exhaustion, and depression) have less ability to provide positive contingent reactions towards children (Buettner et al., 2016). Particularly, stressed teachers may not be sensitive enough to provide assistance and comfort for children who struggle with internalizing symptoms, which in turn, may increase the level of the children's anxiety–withdrawal symptoms.

Third, highly stressed teachers, less able to regulate their own emotions, might be less tolerant of children's challenging behaviors. Preschool teachers cannot simply ignore children's challenging behaviors (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009). To promote children's social and emotional learning, teachers need to intervene effectively when such behaviors are displayed – this demands high levels of attention and involvement from teachers. In this situation, stressed teachers may express their own anger towards children or walk away from the situation, which in turn may escalate children's externalizing behavior problems. Although there is a lack of evidence for the association between teachers' stress and tolerance in the ECE literature, Kokkinos et al. (2005) found that stressed teachers in primary schools are less tolerant of children's challenging behaviors.

Finally, people who report high levels of perceived stress are less likely to employ optimal cognitive reappraisal strategies in the coping process, to reinterpret the meaning of stressful situations in a positive way, (Cohen et al., 1983), and often display negative moods and affect (Mroczek & Almeida, 2004). According to social learning theory (Bandura, 1973), it is possible that children imitate stressed teachers' negative cognitions or emotions. Particularly, when both a lead teacher and assistant teacher(s) are stressed, children are likely to be exposed to environments filled with negative moods and affect, which hamper children's social and emotional learning. Furthermore, when teachers themselves do not have abilities to reappraise stressful situations, they may not be able to socialize children by providing positive responsiveness towards children's negative emotions (e.g., teaching emotional reappraisal strategies and problem-solving skills). Previous studies have found that parents' contingent reactions towards children's negative emotions contribute to children's socialization process (e.g., Eisenberg & Fabes, 1994; Eisenberg, Fabes, & Murphy, 1996). It is likely that teachers play a similar role in supporting children's social and emotional development.

Recognizing the importance of the teacher's role, previous studies have emphasized the role of teachers' stress in teaching and caregiving (e.g., Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Whitaker et al., 2015). However, it is not clear if the effects of teachers' stress extend to their perceptions of children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning, which may alter the quality of teachers' interaction with certain children.

The current study is designed to understand whether the degree of teachers' stress, measured by perceived personal stress and job-related emotional exhaustion, is associated with teachers' evaluations of children's emotional, social, and behavioral functioning, after controlling for child demographics, parental stress, teachers' professional background, and observed classroom quality using a multilevel approach to account for the variance attributable to the classroom and program levels. Perceived personal stress captures how people cognitively and emotionally appraise stressful situations (Cohen et al., 1983); alternatively, job-related emotional exhaustion shows the extent of teachers' prolonged stress that exceeds their coping abilities in their workplace (Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, 2001). In addition, we explored whether teachers' stress levels differently associate with their perceptions of children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning by teacher type (i.e., lead vs. assistant).

We hypothesized that when lead and assistant teachers report a higher degree of personal and job-related stress, they will perceive children to have more externalizing (anger and aggression) and internalizing (anxiety and withdrawal) behavior problems, and to have less positive social skills, although magnitudes of the associations may differ by teacher type. More specifically, we hypothesized that children will have higher levels of teacher-reported behavioral problems and lower levels of social competence when the cumulative stress level is higher because both lead and assistant teachers contribute to the ECE classroom climate. In sum, our study explored associations between (a) cumulative stress and teacher-reported child outcomes; (b) lead teachers' stress and teacher-reported child outcomes; and (c) assistant teachers' stress and teacher-reported child outcomes.

Section snippets

Participants

A total of 329 children and their 103 teachers (from 54 preschool classrooms) working in 13 different early care and education center-based programs in two US metropolitan areas participated in the current study. The teachers consisted of 54 lead teachers, eight co‑lead teachers, and 41 assistant teachers, arranged in several different classroom structures. Four classrooms had three teachers: three of them had a lead, a co‑lead, and an assistant; the other classroom had one lead teacher and two

Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlations

Table 3 shows the descriptive statistics of key independent and dependent variables: teachers' cumulative personal stress and job-related emotional exhaustion, lead and assistant teachers' personal stress and job-related emotional exhaustion, and children's anger-aggression, anxiety-withdrawal, and social competence. When we compared lead and assistant teachers' stress levels (personal and job-related emotional exhaustion) using the t-tests, we found that the levels of lead teachers' personal

Discussion

Using multilevel analyses, we examined how preschool teachers' personal stress and job-related emotional exhaustion are associated with their perceptions of children's anger-aggression, anxiety-withdrawal, and social competence. In ECE settings, it is common for preschool classrooms to have multiple teachers working together to serve children (Sosinsky & Gilliam, 2011). To explore children's experiences in classrooms having multiple teachers, we first examined how lead and assistant teachers'

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