Investigating the impacts of middle leadership and teacher resilience on teacher well-being in early childhood education in Mainland China : a mixed-method approach /

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Student Theses

2023

Li, Xinlin

Hong Kong : The Education University of Hong Kong

Thesis

Facing the growing recognition of early childhood education (ECE) due to its life-long impacts on children, more importance has been attached to its quality and, hence, the professional capacity of ECE teachers. Nonetheless, much less attention has been paid to a key element, namely teacher well-being and how to properly support it. In view of the dearth of literature regarding this topic in mainland China, and also due to the scarcity of mixed-method research in this field, the current thesis adopted a sequential explanatory design to explore the current well-being status of ECE teachers from China, as well as the supporting conditions. Grounded on the Job Demands-Resources model (JD-R), middle leadership and teacher resilience were selected as a prospective job resource and personal resource that might benefit teacher well-being. The research eventually showed a generally satisfactory level of well-being for the sampled ECE teachers. The research also provided a piece of direct evidence of the positive and significant relationships between the selected job resource, namely middle leadership, and teacher well-being. Specifically, teacher resilience significantly mediated such relationship. In addition, the discussions shed light on the foundational role of culture, overwhelming job demands, and unprivileged middle leaders in the sampled context. Such findings led the researcher to formulate a new model of teacher well-being. The new model follows the multi-dimensional notion of well-being as well as the categorisations of demands and resources from JD-R. It further highlights the potentially more complex relationships between components of the teacher well-being model, and the contextual influence of culture on all components and interactions within the well-being system. Overall, the research has demonstrated the well-being status of a sample of ECE teachers from mainland China and benefits of job and personal resources (e.g., middle leadership and teacher resilience). Implications have also been suggested in terms of theory, methodology, practice, and policy, with the hope of making meaningful changes to improve the well-being of Chinese ECE teachers

LG51.H43 Dr 2023eb Lix

https://educoll.lib.eduhk.hk/records/kuGsYXCx