Emotional labor and absenteeism among early childhood educators: The mediating roles of negative affect and psychological meaningfulness

Abstract

Teacher absenteeism is one of the key factors that has been fingered as the bane of quality early childhood education in low- and middle-income countries. Failing to report to school as scheduled is considered symptomatic of emotional dysregulation. However, limited research has explored emotional labor as a possible predictor of teacher absenteeism. Therefore, this study, using the conservation of resources theory, examines the influence of emotional labor (i.e., surface and deep acting) on absenteeism, and the mediating roles of negative affect and psychological meaningfulness. Our study used cross-sectional data from 574 preschool teachers in Ghana and structural equation modeling (SEM) to test the hypotheses. The results reveal that surface acting increases absenteeism. Further, negative affect and psychological meaningfulness partially mediated surface acting and absenteeism relationship, but psychological meaningfulness fully mediated deep acting and absenteeism relationship. This study supports the theoretical assumption that teacher absence from school is a resource-based process that is associated with surface acting directly and indirectly via negative affect and psychological meaningfulness. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.

Keywords

• Emotional labor
• Negative affect
• Psychological meaningfulness
• Absenteeism
• Early childhood education
• Preschool teachers