Helping early childhood educators thrive: insights from human resource management
Abstract
Purpose
Early childhood education (ECE) workers (educators and caregivers) play an important role in fostering an effective learning environment for children. However, the alarming turnover in this profession has made it incredibly difficult for ECE programs and employers to retain and support this segment of the workforce. The purpose of this exploratory qualitative inquiry is to answer how early childhood workers experience workplace thriving.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with employees of a community-funded childhood education and care program. A stratified random sampling technique was used to interview the employees who (i) had successfully completed the probationary period; (ii) qualified as ECE workers based on their job description or the human resources coordinator’s assessment. Interviews were conducted till the point of data saturation. Thematic analysis revealed how ECE workers professionally thrive at multiple levels.
Findings
The findings were clustered into five broader spheres in alignment with the social-ecological framework. The personal sphere showcased workers’ passion, work meaningfulness, value system and skill transferability. The microsystems included children, parents, workplace friends and managers as influencing actors. In the mesosystems, leadership processes and managerial support emerged as salient factors. The exosystems captured organizational objectives, job characteristics and work environment. Finally, in the macrosystems, industrial norms, labor market dynamics, and community-building informed workplace thriving of this population.
Originality/value
The current research applies the social-ecological lens to analyze the factors that help ECE workers professionally thrive. The social-ecological framework not only identifies multi-level recommendations but also the human resource management (HRM) interventions at the levels that need the most attention. The current research is among the first to analyze ECE workers’ professional thriving from an HRM viewpoint.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This research is partially funded by the Community Engaged Scholarship Program at Sam Houston State University.
I would like to thank everyone who made this research possible.
A special thanks to Dr. Lee M. Miller and Dr. Joyce McCauley for selecting me for the 2023–2024 Community Engaged Scholarship (CES) program. This research would not have been possible without the CES initiative.
Thank you, Kaye Boehning, for giving me the access to your amazing Montessori schools. Many thanks to Courtney Davison for scheduling the interviews. The success of this project heavily relies on the contribution and participation of the awesome staff members at Tomorrow’s Promise Montessori Schools.
Thanks to Dr.Gulden Esat for her insightful teaching tidbit at the Exploring Engagement Workshop, which inspired me to pursue this research. Thank you for sharing your invaluable recommendations during the revision process of this manuscript.
Last but not least, I would like to thank Dr. Jeanne Marie Iorio, Dr. Mark Vicars, and the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback on this work.
Citation
Masood, H. (2024), "Helping early childhood educators thrive: insights from human resource management", Qualitative Research Journal, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/QRJ-07-2024-0167
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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