Early care and education (ECE) teachers are paid strikingly low wages, yet are increasingly expected to advance children’s learning by offering high-quality classroom environments. Teachers’ capacities to provide high-quality instruction should be affected by the stressors they encounter and the supports they receive. However, ECE stressors and supports related to classroom quality, particularly those dimensions of quality reflecting the promotion of students’ self-regulation, are understudied. The capacities teachers draw on to promote student self-regulation, such as patience, planning ability, positive affect, and scaffolding of peer interactions, may be precisely those abilities most likely to be impacted by their own stressors and supports. The current study measures the prevalence of a range of stressors (depressive symptoms, household chaos, less than very good health, teacher salary, food insecurity) and supports (in the workplace and at home) in a sample of ECE teachers serving low-income preschoolers in Tulsa, OK. Multilevel regression models then test for associations between those stressors and supports and observed measures of classroom quality – both the widely-used CLASS and newer measures that assess classroom management, social-emotional instruction, scaffolding of peer interactions, and use of power assertive and dismissive behavioral control – or “red flag” – strategies. The majority of associations from stressors and supports to classroom quality measures were non-significant and effect sizes were small (ranging from 0.17-0.30). Of the stressors, only low teacher salary was significantly associated with quality outcomes, and only for just 2 of 8 outcomes tested (worse classroom management and poorer quality of instruction). Out of the 48 associations tested between the 6 workplace supports and 8 quality outcomes, fewer than one-third were statistically significant and not always in expected directions. Results underscore a need for replication with other samples, using direct measures of teacher stress, so that the field can better understand how these aspects of teachers’ experiences translate into classroom quality, and ultimately, to child outcomes.

早期护理和教育（ECE）老师的工资低得惊人，但人们日益期望它们通过提供高质量的教室环境来促进儿童的学习。教师所提供的高质量教学能力应受到他们所承受的压力和所获得支持的影响。但是，对与课堂质量有关的ECE压力源和支持，特别是那些反映促进学生自我调节的质量维度，却没有得到充分研究。教师为促进学生的自我调节所需要的能力，例如耐心，计划能力，积极影响和建立同伴互动的能力，恰恰是那些最有可能受到其自身压力和支持影响的能力。当前的研究测量了一系列压力源（抑郁症状，家庭混乱，在为俄克拉荷马州塔尔萨的低收入学龄前儿童服务的欧洲经委会教师样本中，健康状况，教师工资，粮食不安全状况和良好的支持水平（在工作场所和家里）还不够。然后，多层回归模型测试这些压力源和支持之间的关联，并观察课堂质量的衡量标准-包括广泛使用的CLASS和较新的衡量标准，用于评估课堂管理，社交情感指导，同伴互动的脚手架以及使用断断续续的权力的使用行为控制（或“危险信号”）策略。从压力源和支持到课堂质量衡量的大多数关联不重要，效果范围很小（范围从0.17-0.30）。在压力源中，只有低教师工资与质量结果显着相关，并且仅测试了8个结果中的2个（更差的课堂管理和较差的教学质量）。在6个工作场所支持和8个质量结果之间测试的48个协会中，只有不到三分之一具有统计学意义，并且并不总是朝着预期的方向发展。结果强调需要使用教师压力的直接量度与其他样本进行复制，以便该领域可以更好地了解教师体验的这些方面如何转化为课堂质量，并最终转化为儿童成绩。