The Study of the Mediating Effect of the Childcare Center Teacher’s Ego-Resiliency on the Relationship between Director’s Transformational Leadership and Teacher Self-Efficacy for Teacher-Young children Relationships

This article explored the mediation the effect of childcare center teacher’s ego-resiliency on the relationship between director’s transformational leadership and teacher self-efficacy for teacher-young child relationships. The subjects were 255 childcare centers teachers. Questionnaires, which required self-report by the childcare centers teachers, were used to investigate director’s transformational leadership, childcare center teacher’s ego-resiliency and teacher self-efficacy for teacher-young child relationships. Analyses were conducted by Pearson Correlation, SEM(Structural Equation Modeling), Bootstrapping, Sobel Test, using of AMOS 10.0, and SPSS 21.0. There are three main findings. First, Structural Equation Modeling(SEM) revealed that the director's transformational leadership influenced on the childcare center teacher’s ego-resiliency. Second, the childcare center teacher’s ego-resiliency influenced on the teacher self-efficacy for teacher-young child relationships. Third, the director's transformational leadership influenced indirectly on the teacher self-efficacy for teacher-young child relationships by the teacher’s ego-resiliency, but not directly. This study is important in that it identified the relationships between director’s transformational leadership, teacher’s ego-resiliency, and teacher self-efficacy for teacher-young child relationships. The findings can be utilized to enhance teachers' self-efficacy in building relationships with young children via improving their ego-resiliency.