Early childhood educators’ well-being and physiological stress in the workplace: an exploratory study utilizing wearable technology

The work of early childhood educators with children aged birth to 5 is emotionally and physically demanding and sometimes hazardous to educators’ health and well-being. Despite recent increased interest in investigating educator well-being, gaps remain in our knowledge. In particular, much of the extant research is focused on psychological aspects of educator well-being, often measured subjectively through self-report. Objective direct measurement, including of educators’ physiological well-being, is limited. This study, with 100 educators in Australia, included self-report measurements of educators’ health and well-being using a survey and objective physiological assessments of heart rate variability using Hexoskin wearable technology. Overall, educators reported significantly poorer mental health compared to national data; between 18% and 30% of respondents reported very noticeable job demands, regular emotional exhaustion, sleep trouble, and burnout, and 47% reported low self-esteem. Significant correlations indicated that educators reporting poorer mental well-being, higher job demands and stressors, and low self-esteem also had lower parasympathetic activation (e.g., lower heart rate variability) and potentially sympathetic dominance (based on a higher low-frequency/high-frequency power ratio), although we highlight challenges to interpreting some of these physiological indices. Of note was that by Bayesian standards, these correlations only met the standard of anecdotal evidence. Future research combining real-time physiological monitoring with targeted observations of workplace events could provide deeper insights into the complex dynamics between chronic subjective well-being and acute stress responses.