Early Childhood Educators’ Wellbeing Project
  1. Macquarie University
  2. Research
  3. Research centres, institutes and initiatives
  4. Early Childhood Education
  5. Our research
  6. Early Childhood Educators’ Wellbeing Project
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Assessing the wellbeing of early childhood educators

We undertake multiple projects with a holistic approach to examining aspects of early childhood educators’ wellbeing, in the context of both their work environment and the broader socio-cultural-political environment.

Compromised educator wellbeing is costly, to both educators and the organisations that employ them. These costs are ultimately borne by society. Costs can relate to absenteeism, which may:

  • be due to illness or injury, meaning organisations must employ casual staff and/or pay higher workers’ compensation premiums if claims are made
  • mean that children have unstable care arrangements and relationships with families may be compromised.

About the project

The Early Childhood Educators’ Wellbeing Project (ECEWP) defines educator wellbeing as a dynamic state, involving the interaction of individual, relational, work-environmental and sociocultural-political aspects and contexts. Educators’ wellbeing is the responsibility of the individual and the agents of these contexts, requiring ongoing direct and indirect supports, across psychological, physiological and ethical dimensions.

Through our research, the ECEWP team is assessing:

  • educators’ psychological wellbeing through a range of psychometric assessments
  • educators’ physiological wellbeing through:
    • health screening
    • biometric measures of height, weight, flexibility and blood pressure
    • cortisol measures
    • cardio-respiratory activity and physical effort using wearable technology.
  • the impact of organisational and social factors on educators’ wellbeing
  • the impact of educators’ wellbeing on their interactions with children.

By taking this holistic view, the data we gather provides a comprehensive understanding of educators’ wellbeing that can inform interventions to better support and sustain the workforce. These interventions will have benefits for educators themselves, the services and organisations they work for and, importantly, for children and their families.

Project lead: Professor Sandie Wong – responsible for overall management of the project.

Project members:

  • Associate Professor Tamara Cumming – responsible for conceptual and theoretical aspects of the project, and leading the team's advocacy.
  • Professor Rebecca Bull – analysing data from the project and supporting the dissemination of findings.
  • Dr Laura McFarland (University of Melbourne) – leading the educator–child interactions component of the project.
  • Dr Nicole Jamison – supports the team in interdisciplinary and co-design research processes.
  • Dr Sandy MacQuarrie (Griffith University) – responsible for the physiological component of the project.
  • Kim Woodland – assists with coordination, communication and reporting.

We have established WECARE (Wellbeing of Early Childhood Educators) – an international alliance of researchers to work collaboratively across projects, in order to better understand:

  • the state of wellbeing of early childhood professionals
  • the shared versus context-specific impacts on educator wellbeing.

We are working with researchers from a range of countries, including:

  • Canada
  • Chile
  • China and Hong Kong SAR
  • England
  • Finland
  • Iceland
  • Indonesia
  • Macau
  • Netherlands
  • New Zealand
  • Philippines
  • Singapore
  • South Korea
  • United States.

We have six projects that feed into the main Early Childhood Educators’ Wellbeing Project.

  1. Conceptualisation of educator wellbeing.
  2. Educators’ wellbeing during COVID-19.
  3. Impacts of educators’ wellbeing on their interactions with children.
  4. Interventions to support educators’ wellbeing.
  5. Organisational factors influencing educators’ wellbeing.
  6. State of educators’ wellbeing.

Download overview of ECEWP sub-projects.
ECEWP in the media
Newsletters

Contact us at ecewp@mq.edu.au to request earlier issues.

Educator wellbeing includes psychological, physiological and professional factors interacting between individual, organisational, sociocultural and political levels. It is now widely recognised that educator wellbeing impacts not only educators themselves, but their families, the children and families in their educational care, and their employers and society more broadly.

Many organisations have implemented initiatives to support educator wellbeing. However, we have very little evidence of how services and organisations can best support educator wellbeing. It is important, therefore, that we critically reflect on what initiatives are currently being implemented in early childhood services to support educator wellbeing.

Our goal is to gather and share real-world examples of practical strategies that can be implemented and used by service leaders to support their own and their team’s wellbeing. These practical strategies will be collated and made accessible to the sector through wellbeing initiative profiles (see below) that we will make available here on our website.

To contribute

If you would like to contribute a wellbeing initiative profile, please download the following documents:

For more information contact ecewp@mq.edu.au