Drawing on the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model and Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this study examined the psychological mechanisms underlying the relationship between affective empathy and retention intention among preschool teachers. A cross-sectional survey was conducted with 833 kindergarten teachers in Hunan Province, China, utilizing validated measures. Serial mediation analysis indicated that affective empathy was not directly associated with retention intention. However, significant indirect negative associations were identified through three distinct resource depletion pathways: (1) an independent pathway via diminished psychological resilience, (2) an independent pathway via heightened emotional exhaustion, and (3) a serial mediation pathway wherein elevated affective empathy was sequentially associated with lower resilience, increased emotional exhaustion, and ultimately, reduced retention intention. These findings highlight that while affective empathy is an essential pedagogical trait in early childhood care, unbuffered empathic engagement may act as a chronic emotional job demand that accelerates internal resource loss. The results suggest that preserving empathic teaching while mitigating emotional exhaustion demands a systemic integration of emotional boundary skills, institutional peer support, and structural workplace reforms.
Preschool educators are responsible for providing young children with physical care by meeting their needs for cleanliness, comfort and safety while also respecting their privacy. Drawing on concept of ideological dilemmas, the aim is to produce an empirically grounded account of how preschool educators in Sweden describe and make sense of young children's bodily care in relation to questions of privacy, with a particular focus on the tensions and considerations that emerge in their accounts. Fifteen interviews with educators working with children aged 1-3 years were analysed using thematic analysis. Three themes were identified: Supporting children's independence, Transferring and maintaining children's power and Creating safety through structure and routines. The analysis shows how educators draw on different, sometimes competing, values concerning care, autonomy, protection and social norms. They seek to support children's agency by encouraging self-care, explaining their actions, asking questions and offering choices, while retaining responsibility for necessary care and socialisation. Bodily care thus emerges as a relational, professional and pedagogical practice in which privacy and integrity are not fixed principles but are continually negotiated through everyday interactions and institutional conditions.
Despite extensive research confirming parents' crucial role in children's music learning, few studies have systematically examined, from parents' perspectives, how their cultural backgrounds shape the extent and ways of their support for preschool children's participation in extracurricular music learning. To address this gap, this study adopts Bourdieu's theory of cultural capital to analyze how parents' cultural backgrounds - particularly their educational attainment and prior music learning experience - influence their support for their preschool children's engagement in extracurricular music learning. Drawing on data from 636 valid questionnaires and interviews with 26 parents in China, this study provides an in-depth analysis of the influence of parents' educational and musical backgrounds on their encouragement of their children's participation in extracurricular music learning, underscoring the crucial role of parental cultural capital in facilitating children's acquisition of cultural capital through musical practice. In addition, this study suggests that theintergenerational transmission of cultural capital is not a director automatic process. Rather, parents' cultural capital may beconverted into concrete educational practices through theirperceptions of the value of music education, their beliefs regardingtheir children's musical potential, and their confidence and capacityto support their children's musical learning.
Preschool teachers' daily interpersonal relationships actively construct their school's organizational climate. However, the underlying psychological and behavioral mechanisms linking staff connections to organizational climate remain understudied. This study investigated how interpersonal relationships shape organizational climate by focusing on the parallel mediating roles of psychological wellbeing, which represents teachers' internal emotional states, and self-regulation, which represents their active cognitive and behavioral capacity. Data were collected from 506 preschool teachers across Taiwan using the custom-developed Interpersonal Relationships and Organizational Climate Survey (IROCS). We conducted partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) with 5,000 bootstrap resamples to evaluate the structural model. Based on the subjective views and perceptions of the participating preschool teachers, the results revealed that psychological wellbeing and self-regulation partially mediate the relationship between interpersonal relationships and organizational climate. Both indirect pathways were statistically significant, with self-regulation demonstrating a significantly stronger, more proximal mediating effect than psychological wellbeing. These findings imply that, from the participants' perspectives, a positive organizational climate is cultivated through supportive workplace relationships that nourish teachers' emotional well-being and support their daily self-regulatory behaviors. Preschool leaders should implement structured institutional practices, such as reflective work discussion groups, peer mentoring, and professional learning communities, to support teachers' self-regulatory capacities and build a collaborative, resilient organizational climate.
