Adverse childhood experiences, stress, and resilience among early childhood teachers

Early childhood teachers play a critical role in supporting young children's cognitive, social, and emo-tional development. Unfortunately, teachers' abilities to promote young children's well-being can be hin-dered by their own stress. Teachers can experience both workplace stressors as well as chronic stres-sors from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Very little is known about whether different sources of teacher's stress have independent effects on their functioning. The present study examines whether workplace stress and history of ACEs are unique or redundant predictors of teacher resilience and class-room behavior, including teacher-child interaction quality, child classroom misbehavior, and staff affect regulation. Data were collected from female teachers ( N = 718) across 101 childcare centers. Teachers (Mage = 39.26, SD = 13.69) completed self-report assessments on their history of ACEs, workplace stress, and resilience. For a subsample of teachers ( n = 58) classroom behavior was observationally coded in the classroom. Controlling for student-teacher ratio and center type, both a higher number of ACEs and workplace stress were associated with lower levels of resilience. Only a history of ACEs was associated with observed teacher-child interaction quality and child classroom misbehavior, not workplace stress. Although there are some limitations to the measurement of retrospective ACEs, the present study offers some promising findings regarding the impact of ACEs on teacher functioning. The present findings sug-gest that addressing trauma-specific stress is important for early childhood teacher interventions, beyond general relaxation and stress management strategies.(c) 2022 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Automated summary

Early childhood teachers play a critical role in supporting young children's development, but their own stress can hinder their ability to promote children's well-being. This study found that both workplace stress and adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) had an impact on teacher resilience and classroom behavior. However, only ACEs were associated with teacher-child interaction quality and child classroom misbehavior, not workplace stress.