EECERA Conference 2025 – Guest Blog # 50: Teacher Well-Being Matters

One of a series of short blog posts by presenters who will be sharing their work at the upcoming annual conference in Bratislava, Slovakia. Any views expressed in this post are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official stance of their affiliated institution or EECERA.

How Well Are You, Dear Early Childhood Teachers?

By Syifa Mufiedatussalam, Universitas Islam Internasional Indonesia, Indonesia

Photo by Pete Godfrey on Unsplash

How Well Are You, Dear Early Childhood Teachers?

Every morning, classrooms across Indonesia come to life. Tiny shoes are neatly lined up at the door, laughter and chatter spill into the air, and somewhere in the middle of it all is you, the early childhood teacher.

You greet each child with a smile, even if you barely slept the night before. You kneel to tie shoelaces, wipe away tears, and listen to stories about lost toys or new pets. You sing, you read, you encourage little hands to try again when they fail. For a few precious hours, you become the safe place in a child’s world.

But I wonder, when was the last time someone asked how you were doing? Not just whether you finished your lesson plans or kept your classroom tidy, but truly, how well are you?

Lately, there was a case where daycare owner has failed to protect the children entrusted to them. While these rare incidents don’t define the profession, they serve as a painful reminder: when educators are exhausted, unsupported, or struggling with their own well-being, the children in their care can be affected too.

This is why I do this study, to understand, in a more complete way, the well-being of early childhood teachers in Indonesia.

Looking through the PERMA lens

I turned to Martin Seligman’s PERMA well-being theory: Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. These five dimensions go beyond the absence of stress, capturing the elements that help people truly flourish.

With the support of 934 early childhood teachers from across Indonesia, I used the PERMA Profiler, adapted and validated for our context, to capture a snapshot of their well-being. Every teacher participated voluntarily, with full confidentiality and respect for their privacy.

I used Rasch Model Analysis to establish a valid and reliable instrument for Indonesian context, because there are limited studies using Rasch Model Analysis in early childhood education.

The data told a story both encouraging and concerning that 15% of teachers were in the low well-being category. While, around 66% were in the moderate range, only 19% reported high well-being.

Patterns emerged: First, women tended to score higher than men; Second, generation X teachers (ages 44–59) reported the highest well-being; and finally, those with a master degree graduates felt the most fulfilled in their work.

Why it matters?

Behind each statistic is a living, breathing classroom where children watching, listening, and learning not only from what their teacher says, but from how their teacher is. A teacher who feels engaged, valued, and connected is more likely to create an environment where children feel safe to explore and grow.

But when well-being runs low, so does the patience needed to guide a crying child through frustration, or the energy to bring creativity into a lesson. Over time, the joy of teaching can fade, leaving only routine and exhaustion.

From insight to action

The PERMA Profiler gives us a way to measure teacher well-being, but numbers alone don’t bring change. We need intentional action such as building peer support networks to ease isolation; offering professional development that includes emotional resilience and empathy; recognizing the invisible emotional that teachers carry every day.

An invitation

At my EECERA presentation, I will share how each PERMA dimension plays out among Indonesian teachers, and how Rasch Model being conducted to analyze the data.

A personal note
This research is not just data for me, it is a reflection of the many teachers I have met who carry both the joy and the burden of their work in equal measure. I have seen their tired eyes light up when a child learns something new, and I have also seen the quiet moments when the weight of responsibility feels heavy. My hope is that by understanding teacher well-being, we can make sure that no teacher feels they must choose between caring for their students and caring for themselves.

To every early childhood teacher: your well-being matters. It is not just for you, but for every child who walks through your classroom door. You are the heart of their learning, the anchor in their early years. And so, I ask again, with sincerity and care:

How well are you, dear early childhood teachers?

Connect with me:
LinkedIn: syifa mufiedatussalam
email: syifa.mufiedatussalam@uiii.ac.id

Syifa Mufiedatussalam will present work referred to in this blog in Symposium Set F19 | Wednesday 27th August 2025, 14:50 – 16:10. (Schedule liable to change; please refer to final programme for details).