Understand the turnover intention among kindergarten teachers intheChinese mainland

Abstract

In recent years, teachers in kindergarten from the Chinese mainland face many new challenges after ECE (early children education) promoting policy in 2010 by the ChineseMinistry of Education. Therefore,high-quality KG (kindergarten) teachers with excellent job performance and long retention are necessary. However, due to the high workload and low salary, the turnover intention among KG teachers in China is high. Once turnover happens, both direct cost and indirect cost occur, which would bring a negative influence onECE quality. Due to the professional nature of KG teachers, the replacement is hard, therefore it is important to understand how to achieve retention of KG teachers. Hereby, workload and work-family conflict (WFC) are identified as independent variables to predict the turnover intention among KG teachers in the Chinese mainland mediated by job stress. Family-supportive supervisor (FSS) is identified as a moderator who belongs to the job resource under the Job-Demands-Resources (JD-R) model in this study. Through data analysis by SmartPLS, workload, and work-family conflict are positively related to turnover intention among KG teachers in the Chinese mainland mediated by job stress. However, family-supportive supervisor (FSS) does not have a moderating effect on the relationship between workload, work-family conflict, and job stress. This study gives new insights for understanding the factors that are related toturnover intention among KG teachers in the Chinese mainland.