What we know and what we don’t know about burnout among early childhood care providers

Abstract

This paper reviews and synthesizes the research on burnout among child care workers in early childhood settings and identifies a number of conceptual and empirical gaps in the literature. Factors that contribute to burnout include the wages and working conditions of child; unclear, ambiguous, or conflicting job descriptions; low levels of communication and social support in the workplace; educational background and employment history; personality factors; and perceptions of child care work. A number of recommendations are made to extend and deepen the research on burnout. There is a need both for more longitudinal research on child care workers as they progress through their career ladders and for retrospective research on individuals after they have left the field due to burnout. Qualitative research methods such as ethnography, case study, and action research can provide additional depth, meaning, and detail on the lived experience of burnout and thereby complement and extend the many quantitative studies in this area. The paper discusses the importance of gender relations and feminist research approaches to the study of a field in which 98% of the workforce are women.