Teachers’ professional well-being in Dutch child care and after-school care programs: relations with individual, classroom and organizational characteristics

Abstract

This paper investigates determinants of professional well-being (PWB) of teachers working in child care (i.e. day care and after-school care) using the Job Demands and Resources (JD-R) model. Based on nationally representative data from 841 teachers and 494 leaders working in 559 Dutch child care centers, we tested a comprehensive set of possible predictors of PWB at the individual teacher (e.g., work experience), classroom (e.g., classroom composition) and organizational level (e.g., team cohesion based on teachers’ and leaders’ views). Following the JD-R model, job demands included working hours, children-to-teacher ratio, age composition in the classroom, and proportion of children with behavioral difficulties or special needs, staff shortage and percentage of permanent staff, and resources concerned team cohesion and continuous professional development. We utilized data of different program types (i.e. full-day child care, half-day child care, and after-school programs) from two nationally representative samples, one collected before COVID-19 and one collected after. Our results indicated that job demands and resources were related differently to various professional well-being measures and that associations differed by program type, emphasizing the importance of adopting a comprehensive approach to understand teachers’ PWB. Altogether, only a few job demands (e.g., children-to-teacher ratio) were related to PWB in some program types, but the most consistent and strongest finding concerned the positive association of team cohesion, suggesting a buffering effect. Also, teachers’ PWB decreased after COVID-19. In conclusion, our study highlights that a joint focus on strengthening job resources within the organization fulfills a pivotal role in creating and maintaining a sustainable and high-quality workforce.