Emotional competencies, resilience, and stress in early childhood educators

Abstract

There is broad consensus on the need to train teachers with a solid development of emotional competencies not only to promote and enhance the learning of their students, but to promote their own well-being. Within this perspective, it is necessary to identify those factors that may be involved in the development of this capacity in Educators who begin formal education. The objective of this study was to determine the potential of emotional competencies present in Early Childhood Educators and their relationship with resilience and stress. A collection of information was carried out on 154 Early Childhood Educators from a vulnerable region of Chile through three instruments: Emotional Competencies Scale; Resilience Scale, and Perceived Stress Scale. The analysis of the information indicates a good level of emotional competencies and resilience, medium to high presence of stress, a positive relationship between emotional competence and resilience and negative with perceived stress. The three variables evaluated present a better development in professionals belonging to private than public educational systems. We conclude that it is important to reflect on the continuous and initial training of educators and on the relevance of current policies to guarantee the quality of preschool education.