Teacher well-being and working conditions – the case of time for indirect educational work

Teachers working in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) face increasing challenges resulting from ongoing staff shortages and high workload. At the same time, since 2019 the German ECEC system has been implementing a legally mandated national quality development process designed to enhance structural and process quality. This tension between limited (staff) resources and growing demands for professionalization often manifests in the form of time pressure. Together with a high workload this lack of time can affect teachers’ well-being which, in turn, is a key determinant of staff retention, work performance and the associated quality of ECEC. Key resources to meet these demands are considered to be an adequate staff-child ratio and sufficient non-contact time to fulfill indirect educational tasks such as the preparation of pedagogical activities or documentation of children’s developmental progress. However, resources for these tasks are often overlooked in studies examining the impact of different working conditions on teacher well-being. Against this background, this study investigated a theoretically informed indirect association between the granted amount of non-contact time and teachers’ mental well-being via teachers’ subjective satisfaction with the actual amount of non-contact time. Using representative cross-sectional data of teachers in German ECEC centers a path analysis found a significant indirect-only association between granted non-contact time and well-being through teachers’ satisfaction with non-contact time. These findings highlight the importance of binding agreements on temporal resources for indirect educational work as a potential lever for teachers’ mental well-being.