The Mediating Effect of Childcare Teachers’ Resilience on the Relationship between Social Support in the Workplace and Their Self-Care

Abstract

(1) Background: The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between social support in the workplace for childcare teachers, resilience, and self-care. This study explores the inner mechanism that helps to strengthen self-care of childcare teachers, which enables teachers to provide quality care to children and promote their own wellbeing. (2) Methods: The survey was conducted from September to October 2018 for childcare teachers in Seoul and Gyeonggi Province using convenience sampling. Out of 550 questionnaires, 491 were returned, with 466 used for the analysis, excluding those with incomplete responses. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, and mediation analysis. (3) Results: There were significant correlations between all variables. The mediation analysis showed a complete mediation of resilience. (4) Conclusion: Childcare teachers first have to take good care of themselves in order to perform well as a childcare professional. Educational materials and counseling programs tailored for childcare teachers need to be developed for better self-care and building greater resilience. Materials for directors of daycare centers, as well as teachers stressing the importance of social support for each other, will help childcare teachers’ effective functioning in their professional and personal life. Prevention and intervention programs for self-care will eventually help lower the costs of healthcare in society.

The Contribution of Social Support and Resilience to Preschool Teacher’s Stress

“…The effective contribution of resilience on teacher's job stress was 48,99%, the rest was about uninvestigated variables and errors. These results are in line with previous studies which stated similar results that resilience is closely related to stress levels (Park et al, 2020;Sari et al, 2016).…”

“…When examined in more depth, social support had an effect on stress by first encouraging the emergence of resilience to stress (Kuwanto & Hirano, 2020). In other words, social support does not directly contribute to teacher's job stress but it is causally related to self-efficacy and resilience (Sari et al, 2016;Park et al, 2020).…”

The Impact of COVID-19-Related Work Stress on the Mental Health of Primary Healthcare Workers: The Mediating Effects of Social Support and Resilience

“…Stable and diversified social ties can provide external support resources for individuals to adapt to adversity, and subsequently produce positive results (Kumpfer, 2002;Bhattarai et al, 2021). On the other hand, extensive evidence suggests that social support is an important source of resilience for healthcare workers (Park et al, 2020;Wu C. et al, 2021), and resilience mediates the association between social support and adverse mental health outcomes (e.g., Depression) (Li et al, 2015). Therefore, based on the above evidence, hypothesis 4 was proposed: COVID-19-related work stress affected anxiety and depression of primary healthcare workers through the sequential mediating effects of social support and resilience (H4).…”

Construcción y validación de una escala de autoeficacia en el trabajo

“…Respecto a la dimensión de autocuidado coincide con los resultados obtenidos por Kind et al, (2020) los cuales demuestran una correlación alta positiva entre autocuidado y autoeficacia, lo que realza la importancia de esta dimensión para alcanzar la salud psicológica, emocional y física aumentando la capacidad de resiliencia de los sujetos frente a los eventos que afectan su vida y desempeño laboral (Kwong y Kwan, 2007;Park et al, 2020). Por otra parte, Na-Nan y Sanamthong ( 2019) plantean a partir de sus resultados que la transferencia de motivación, entrenamiento, conocimiento y habilidades constituye una variable mediadora de la autoeficacia.…”

“…El presente estudio define autoeficacia en el trabajo como las creencias que tiene cada trabajador respecto al conjunto de conocimientos, habilidades, actitudes y valores que le permiten concretar sus metas laborales, utilizando de manera óptima los recursos personales y contextuales disponibles en pos de desempeñar con calidad las tareas definidas. La versatilidad del concepto responde a las diversas dimensiones que lo estructuran destacando entre ellas: 1) la transferencia de los logros alcanzados (Criollo, Romero y Fontaines, 2017); 2) el autocuidado que permite mantener un bienestar biopsicoemocional lo que favorece la autoconfianza, esperanza en el futuro y confianza en el trabajo (Park, Song y Kim, 2020); 3) la autogestión que determina las decisiones que las personas realizan, el esfuerzo que despliegan y la perseverancia que sostienen frente a los desafíos (Bandura, 1997); 4) la metacognición que se relaciona con el proceso de análisis, planificación, acción de tareas y conciencia de metas (Colthorpe et al, 2019) y 5) el meta-aprendizaje que implica la capacidad de utilizar estrategias efectivas de aprendizaje lo que potencia la autorregulación de pensamientos, sentimientos y acciones favoreciendo la conquista de objetivos (Colthorpe et al, 2019). Updegraff (2004) plantea la relevancia de dos conceptos en la autoeficacia: 1) la autoconciencia conceptualizada como el conocimiento de sí en cuanto a las capacidades y motivaciones que benefician tanto a sí mismo como a la organización en su conjunto y 2) la autodirección entendida como la conciencia del valor estratégico de la planificación, dando sentido a lo que se está haciendo en el aquí y ahora en función a metas específicas, medibles, alcanzables, realistas y oportunas.…”