Emotion Socialization Strategies of Preschool Teachers in Greece: Job Stress, Age, and Implications for Early Childhood Education

Grounded in stress-reactivity accounts and the Prosocial Classroom model, this study examines how preschool teachers’ responses to children’s negative emotions are associated with teacher job stress and age in Greek early childhood education settings. These frameworks suggest that elevated job stress may erode teachers’ regulatory resources and responsiveness, increasing non-supportive reactions and reducing supportive emotion coaching during emotionally charged classroom interactions. A sample of 101 full-time preschool educators (M age = 42.3 years; 97% female) completed two instruments: the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES) and the Child Care Workers’ Job Stress Inventory (CCW-JSI). Age-controlled partial correlations indicated that higher job stress was associated with more frequent use of non-supportive reactions, including punitive and minimizing responses, and less frequent use of supportive strategies, such as emotion-focused, problem-focused, and expressive encouragement responses. Older teachers tended to report higher supportive response scores, particularly for problem-focused reactions and expressive encouragement. These findings highlight the importance of teacher well-being for the emotional climate of preschool classrooms and suggest that job stress may undermine educators’ capacity to consistently engage in supportive emotion socialization. The study contributes to the education literature by linking teacher stress and emotion socialization practices in a policy context where early childhood education is expanding but remains under-resourced. Implications for teacher education, professional development, and system-level initiatives to support educators’ social-emotional competence are discussed.