Adverse childhood experiences, stress, and resilience among early childhood teachers

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Early childhood teachers play a critical role in supporting young children's cognitive, social, and emotional development. Unfortunately, teachers’ abilities to promote young children's well-being can be hindered by their own stress. Teachers can experience both workplace stressors as well as chronic stressors from adverse childhood experiences (ACEs). Very little is known about whether different sources of teacher's stress have independent effects on their functioning. The present study examines whether workplace stress and history of ACEs are unique or redundant predictors of teacher resilience and classroom behavior, including teacher-child interaction quality, child classroom misbehavior, and staff affect regulation. Data were collected from female teachers (N = 718) across 101 childcare centers. Teachers (Mage = 39.26, SD = 13.69) completed self-report assessments on their history of ACEs, workplace stress, and resilience. For a subsample of teachers (n = 58) classroom behavior was observationally coded in the classroom. Controlling for student-teacher ratio and center type, both a higher number of ACEs and workplace stress were associated with lower levels of resilience. Only a history of ACEs was associated with observed teacher-child interaction quality and child classroom misbehavior, not workplace stress. Although there are some limitations to the measurement of retrospective ACEs, the present study offers some promising findings regarding the impact of ACEs on teacher functioning. The present findings suggest that addressing trauma-specific stress is important for early childhood teacher interventions, beyond general relaxation and stress management strategies.