Romance or reality?: examining burnout in early childhood teachers

Abstract

Relatively high rates of teacher attrition have been consistently identified as a major issue for the teaching profession over several decades. As a result, there has been a growing interest in the wellbeing of teachers across the entire education sector. Recent research by Noble, Goddard and O'Brien (2003) has found that early childhood teachers, on average, maintained significantly lower burnout levels than did other teachers over their first year of service. However, at the beginning of their second year of service early childhood teachers reported significant increases in burnout, in comparison to primary and secondary school teachers who reported more gradual and consistent increases over the initial stages of their careers. The authors of this paper explore these significant statistics and call for further research to be conducted into how early career burnout develops in early childhood teachers. Such an exploration may assist in the reduction of burnout across the early childhood education and care (ECEC) sector.