Effects of Positive Psychological Skills, Empathy, and Job Stress on Young Childhood Teachers' Respect for Children's Rights Practices

Objectives This study examined the differences in the implementation of respect for child rights according to the general background of early childhood teachers (age, experience, education, and type of institution). The researcher analyzed the effects of positive psychological skills, empathy, and job stress on the performance of early childhood educators. Methods For this purpose, a survey was conducted among 460 early childhood educators working in kindergartens and day care centers across the country, and the collected data were analyzed using correlation analysis, and hierarchial regression analysis. Results The findings are as follows: First, there was a positive correlation between young childhood teachers' positive psychological skills, empathy, and child rights-respecting practices, and a negative correlation between young childhood teachers' job stress and child rights-respecting practices. Second, this study examined the effects of teachers' general background and each of the subfactors of positive psychological skills, empathy, and job stress on the child rights-respecting practices, and found that self-efficacy, work overload, optimism, institutional type, relationship with colleagues, cognitive empathy, and lack of principal leadership and administrative support had significant effects on the overall implementation of respect for children's rights, in the following order. Self-efficacy, workload, relationships with colleagues, cognitive empathy, and lack of principal leadership and administrative support significantly influenced the subfactor of respecting children's rights. Self-efficacy, cognitive empathy, work overload, relationships with colleagues, cognitive empathy, institutional type, and optimism significantly affected the child's best interest subfactor. Self-efficacy, one of the positive psychological skills, was the most influential variable in teachers' child rights-respecting practices. Conclusions The results of this study suggest that developing teachers' positive psychological skills and empathy, as well as finding ways to manage job stress, are crucial to promoting early childhood teachers' commitment to respecting children's rights.