Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jappdp Early childhood teachers' stress and children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning Lieny Jeon a, ⁎ , Cynthia K. Buettner b , Ashley A. Grant a , Sarah N. Lang b a School of Education, Johns Hopkins University, United States b Department of Human Sciences, The Ohio State University, United States ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Preschool teacher Stress Externalizing behavior Internalizing behavior Social competence Lead and assistant teachers ABSTRACT Early childhood teachers play a key role in promoting children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning. We investigated how preschool lead and assistant teachers' personal and job-related stress are, collectively and separately, associated with their perceptions of children's anger-aggression, anxiety-withdrawal, and social competence. Using a sample of 103 teachers from 54 classrooms serving 329 children, we conducted three-level multilevel analyses. Lead and assistant teachers' cumulative personal stress was significantly associated with teachers' evaluations of children's anger-aggression, and cumulative job-related emotional exhaustion was sig- nificantly associated with teachers' evaluations of children's anxiety-withdrawal and social competence. Exploring lead and assistant teachers' stress separately, the results showed that lead teachers with higher levels of stress perceived children as having higher levels of anger-aggression and anxiety-withdrawal. On the other hand, assistant teachers' stress was associated with teacher-reported children's social competence. We suggest ways to support children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning through intervening with teachers' stress. 1. Introduction Children significantly expand their abilities to interact and build relationships with others and to control their behaviors and emotions during their preschool years (Denham et al., 2012; Domitrovich, Cortes, & Greenberg, 2007). Preschool-aged children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning, in turn, contribute to their school readiness as well as to their later development (CASEL, 2013; Darling-Churchill & Lippman, 2016; Denham, 2006). When children are more socially and emotionally ready to enter formal school, they tend to adapt better, which coincides with fewer behavioral problems, fewer crimes, and higher rates of graduation and employment (Raver, 2003; Schweinhart & Weikart, 1981). In the current study, we seek to understand better how lead and assistant teachers' stress, collectively and separately, are associated with their perceptions of children's social, emotional, and behavioral functioning in early care and education (ECE) settings. It is well known that the quality of ECE influences children's social and emotional development (Burchinal, Peisner-Feinberg, Bryant, & Clifford, 2000; Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2001). Specifically, ECE pro- grams having better structural quality (e.g., having smaller teacher-to- child ratios and class sizes, teachers with higher educational attainment and training, more administrative support, etc.) have been shown to promote children's social and emotional development (Burchinal, Cryer, Clifford, & Howes, 2002). In addition, process quality in the classroom, represented by teachers' sensitivity, responsiveness, positive interactions, emotional support, and instructional support, stimulates children's development (Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2001). Although it is widely understood that children's social and emotional learning is supported by teachers' abilities to create a positive classroom climate for learning and nurturing, there has been less study of the role of teachers' own emotional health in children's development. This is a concern because early childhood teachers often report that they are highly stressed (McGinty, Justice, & Rimm-Kaufman, 2008). Stress is an individual's emotional state caused by exposure to acute and chronic adverse experiences (Cohen, Kamarck, & Mermelstein, 1983; Roberti, Harrington, & Storch, 2006). In addition to experiencing personal stress, teachers are also likely to experience emotional ex- haustion in their work when the demands of the job exceed their re- sources and introduce conflicts and burdens (Lazarus, 1993). Teachers' personal stress and job-related emotional exhaustion inhibit their abilities to provide consistent emotional support and positive behavior management that children need for their positive social-emotional de- velopment (Hamre, 2014). For example, teachers who experience higher stress have less teaching and nurturing capacity to model https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2018.02.002 Received 22 February 2017; Received in revised form 3 February 2018; Accepted 5 February 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author at: School of Education, Johns Hopkins University, 2800 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21218, United States. E-mail address: lieny.jeon@jhu.edu (L. Jeon). Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology xxx (xxxx) xxx–xxx 0193-3973/ © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. Please cite this article as: Jeon, L., Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology (2018), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appdev.2018.02.002