What character strengths do early childhood educators use to address workplace challenges? Positive psychology in teacher professional development

Abstract

Positive psychology interventions, such as the application of character strengths, can improve job performance and satisfaction across industries, but little of this research has been applied to the early childhood education profession. A qualitative study of in-service early childhood educators (n = 17) completing a character strength application training during professional development was completed in a large city in the northeastern United States. Participants explored the application of character strengths to workplace challenges by referring to the Values in Action classification of strengths. This study analyzed the challenges that educators reported (e.g. children needing to learn social emotional skills; coworkers not completing responsibilities), the difficulty level of those challenges, and the character strengths applied to address them. Workplace challenges followed a normal distribution across low, moderate and high difficulty levels. Children's behavioral needs were the most prevalent type of workplace challenge reported, followed by challenges working with coworkers. Early childhood educators most frequently used kindness, leadership, fairness, hope, love, self-regulation, perseverance, forgiveness and humility to address workplace challenges related to working with children, coworkers, parents and themselves. These strengths appear to be appropriate targets for future professional development seeking to improve teacher well-being in early childhood settings and to prepare teachers to model character strengths for children.