Ntim Seth Yeboah, Antwi Collins Opoku, Aboagye Michael Osei, Mensah Elijah Takyi, Teye Emmanuel Tetteh, Li Xinyu
School of Psychology, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, 321004, China.
Center for Tourism Studies, College of Geography & Environmental Science, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua, 321004, China.
Heliyon. 2024 Nov 1;10(21):e40039. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2024.e40039. eCollection 2024 Nov 15.
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.
教师缺勤是被认为是低收入和中等收入国家优质幼儿教育的祸根的关键因素之一。未能按计划到校被视为情绪失调的症状。然而，有限的研究探讨了情绪劳动作为教师缺勤的一个可能预测因素。因此，本研究运用资源守恒理论，考察情绪劳动（即表层行为和深层行为）对缺勤的影响，以及消极情绪和心理意义的中介作用。我们的研究使用了来自加纳574名学前教师的横断面数据，并采用结构方程模型（SEM）来检验假设。结果表明，表层行为会增加缺勤率。此外，消极情绪和心理意义部分中介了表层行为与缺勤之间的关系，但心理意义完全中介了深层行为与缺勤之间的关系。本研究支持了这样的理论假设，即教师缺课是一个基于资源的过程，它通过消极情绪和心理意义直接或间接地与表层行为相关。我们讨论了研究结果的理论和实践意义。
