Early Childhood Teachers’ Depression and Experiences with Challenging Behaviors: Does Working with Children with Disabilities Matter?

Abstract Given high exclusionary discipline practices and decisions in early childhood education, it is important to understand teachers’ experiences with challenging behaviors and examine factors associated with their experiences. Depression, as a significant indicator of well-being and prevalent among early educators, is understudied in relation to teachers’ challenging behavior experiences. This study examines the association between early childhood teachers’ self-reported depression scores and experiences with children’s challenging behaviors and whether this association varies for teachers working with children with disabilities (CWD), using data from the 2019 National Survey of Early Care and Education. The analysis focused on 3079 center-based early childhood teachers. Both linear and ordinal logistic regression were used to analyze the data. The results showed that teachers with higher levels of depression scores were significantly more likely to report higher levels of challenging behaviors in children. While working with CWD increases the likelihood of reporting challenging behaviors, it did not significantly alter the association between teacher depression and their experiences with challenging behaviors. Implications of these findings are discussed.