The Effect of Early Childhood Teachers’ Consideration on Empathy and Organizational Commitment

This study aimed to examine the relationship among consideration, empathy, and organizational commitment of early childhood teachers working in child care centers.This study investigated the mediating effect of empathy on the relationship between early childhood teachers' consideration and organizational commitment.This research aimed to improve the quality of early childhood education.The subjects of the study were 235 early childhood teachers at early childhood education institutions located in the area of Busan Metropolitan City.Questionnaires were used to collect data.According to the study's results, first, the awareness of consideration, organizational commitment, and empathy of early childhood teachers were relatively high.Second, there was a positive correlation between the factors of consideration, organizational commitment, and empathy of early childhood teachers.In other words, it was found that early childhood teachers with high consideration had high empathy and organizational commitment, and those with high empathy had high organizational commitment.Third, early childhood teachers' empathy partially mediated consideration and organizational commitment.Based on these results, we discussed ways to provide essential data for developing programs that can help increase the organizational commitment of early childhood teachers.