Preschool teachers have become central educators of young children and they are crucial for the quality of care in early childhood education and care (ECEC) institutions. Unfortunately, their profession is particularly affected by work-related burnout symptoms, which should be given special attention in light of the current expansion and professionalization efforts in the ECEC system. Burnout research suggests that burnout symptoms arise from chronic work stress, resulting from imbalances between personal and environmental job demands and resources and leading to negative consequences for institutions, workers, and service recipients. However, little is known about the origins and consequences of preschool teachers’ burnout symptoms in particular, especially in Germany. Hence, the present dissertational project explored preschool teachers’ burnout symptoms and the role of (satisfaction with) different job conditions as well as consequences for the quality of care. In more detail, study 1 investigated personal and environmental job conditions in relation to preschool teachers’ emotional exhaustion, a core symptom of burnout. Individual-level data obtained from 1,384 preschool teachers from 204 preschools across Germany as well as respective preschool-level data were subjected to multilevel analysis. Findings revealed that preschool differences explained a small amount of variance in preschool teachers’ emotional exhaustion and particularly highlighted the role of social experiences at the workplace, such as the perceived team climate and relation to parents. Study 2 explored associations between different aspects of job satisfaction – understood as the subjective-emotional fit between one's own expectations and the perceived work reality – and all three burnout dimensions, including emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment (N = 346). The results emphasized the role of satisfaction with team collaboration and cooperation with parents across all burnout dimensions. Additionally, emotional exhaustion was reversely linked to satisfaction with opportunities for promotions, working hours, and wages. Concerning the consequences of burnout symptoms, study 3 developed and tested a novel experimental design using an autobiographical memory task to investigate the effects of induced burnout symptoms on cognitive and affective empathy, an important prerequisite for high-quality caregiving. With a sample of 355 participants recruited via Amazon.com’s Mturk, findings indicated that the experimental group indeed showed higher burnout symptoms and decreased cognitive empathy compared to the control groups. Finally, in a sample of 1,389 preschool teachers nested in 204 preschools in Germany, study 4 addressed the relation of preschool teachers’ levels of emotional exhaustion and the frequency of language and early literacy related educational activities embedded into daily routines, considered as an important aspect and domain of high process quality. Multilevel analyses demonstrated that emotional exhaustion was negatively linked to the frequency of educational activities beyond important structural characteristics. Taken together, the findings obtained underline the significance of the social environment for preschool teachers’ burnout symptoms. Further, they point toward negative consequences of burnout symptoms for preschool teachers’ empathy and professional practices. The present dissertation addresses an understudied topic of high societal relevance. It has the potential to inform theory development and future empirical work as well as to provide scientific evidence on where and why to intervene against burnout symptoms in preschool teachers.
