Teaching in Early Education: Examining the Relationship among Job Satisfaction, Efficacy, Connection to Students and Student Poverty Concentration
A majority of children in the United States are currently in some type of childcare setting. In defining quality, education of teachers is often used as an important indicator but has been shown to be an ineffective way to define quality. The importance of understanding high quality is especially important given gains that children in poverty can make in high quality settings. Research suggests a more comprehensive definition of quality childcare might include the connection between teachers and children which can be influenced by a number of factors, i.e. job satisfaction, teacher efficacy. The present study seeks to examine these teacher variables that can potentially affect the quality of childcare. Child care teachers completed a state-wide, 71-question, online survey, to address the following two research questions: 1) What is the relationship between job satisfaction, teacher efficacy, connection to students and teacher demographics; and 2) Do teachers’ perceptions of the number of children in poverty attending their center relate to any of the variables of study? Connection to students was found to be positively correlated with teacher efficacy and job satisfaction and negatively correlated with concentration of poverty in the center. Education, often used as an indicator of quality, was not correlated with any variable other than salary.
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