Early childhood centre directors coping with stress: firefighters and oracles.

The study explores kindergarten coordinators' views on work-related stress and how they manage such stress. The questions asked to the kindergarten coordinators were: A) What did they see as stressful moments in their everyday work? B) What caused stressful situations? C) How did they deal with these stress elements and stressful situations?

The research group categorised the stress elements into three topics: 1) dealing with overwhelming amounts of administrative tasks, 2) dealing with managing other people, and 3) dealing with a lack of social support. The kindergarten coordinators lacked knowledge about stress management strategies, which indicates that they need more support and resources to avoid work-related stress and burnout. Finally, the researchers behind the study point out that in some cases, the provision of more resources (financial resources and staff) is necessary in order for kindergarten coordinators to reduce the work-related stress they experience. 

Three groups of kindergarten coordinators participated in the study (a total of 80 participants). The kindergarten coordinators were registered to take part in an educational leadership course at master's degree level, which included a lecture on work-related stress. The study's data collection followed in continuation of this lecture and was done through a) focus group interviews, b) brainstorming about sources of stress, which in turn formed the basis for role-play with subsequent focus group interviews, and c) performance of the role-plays followed by plenary discussions that included fellow students who did not participate in the study. One of the researchers transcribed the plenary sessions. The data material was encoded and thematically categorised.

Kristiansen, E., Tholin, K. R. & Bøe, M. (2021). “Early childhood centre directors coping with stress: firefighters and oracles”. International Journal of Education Management, 35(4):909–921.