Emotion Socialization Strategies of Preschool Teachers in Greece: Job Stress, Age, and Implications for Early Childhood Education

Abstract

Grounded in stress-reactivity accounts and the Prosocial Classroom model, this study examines how preschool teachers’ responses to children’s negative emotions are associated with teacher job stress and age in Greek early childhood education settings. These frameworks suggest that elevated job stress may erode teachers’ regulatory resources and responsiveness, increasing non-supportive reactions and reducing supportive emotion coaching during emotionally charged classroom interactions. A sample of 101 full-time preschool educators (M age = 42.3 years; 97% female) completed two instruments: the Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES) and the Child Care Workers’ Job Stress Inventory (CCW-JSI). Age-controlled partial correlations indicated that higher job stress was associated with more frequent use of non-supportive reactions, including punitive and minimizing responses, and less frequent use of supportive strategies, such as emotion-focused, problem-focused, and expressive encouragement responses. Older teachers tended to report higher supportive response scores, particularly for problem-focused reactions and expressive encouragement. These findings highlight the importance of teacher well-being for the emotional climate of preschool classrooms and suggest that job stress may undermine educators’ capacity to consistently engage in supportive emotion socialization. The study contributes to the education literature by linking teacher stress and emotion socialization practices in a policy context where early childhood education is expanding but remains under-resourced. Implications for teacher education, professional development, and system-level initiatives to support educators’ social-emotional competence are discussed.

1. Introduction

1.1. Emotion Socialization in Early Childhood Education

Social-emotional competence refers to a set of interrelated skills that enable children to recognize and understand emotions, express them appropriately, regulate emotional arousal and behavior, and navigate social relationships effectively. The early years of life are critical for the development of these capacities, which are linked to mental health and well-being and also influence academic readiness and long-term adjustment (Collie & Martin, 2024; Guo et al., 2021; Hachem et al., 2022). Emotion socialization—the process through which children learn about emotions from significant others—plays a foundational role in shaping this competence (Hajal & Paley, 2020; Lunkenheimer et al., 2020; Perry et al., 2020).

While parents are traditionally viewed as primary agents in emotion socialization, preschool teachers have increasingly gained recognition for their central role, particularly as more children participate in structured early education programs from a young age (Fatahi et al., 2022; Valiente et al., 2020). In classroom settings, teachers model emotional expression, guide children through emotional experiences, and respond—either positively or negatively—to children’s affective behaviors. Through these interactions, children develop a nuanced understanding of emotional norms, coping strategies, and appropriate emotional responses (Grosse et al., 2022; Scrimin et al., 2025; Wang et al., 2021; Xie et al., 2022).

1.2. Teacher Emotion Socialization Strategies and Potential Determinants

Teachers’ responses to children’s emotions are often categorized as either supportive (e.g., encouraging emotional expression, offering comfort) or non-supportive (e.g., dismissing, punishing, or minimizing emotions) (Curby et al., 2021; Denham et al., 2021; Ornaghi et al., 2021; Poulou & Denham, 2022). Supportive responses have been consistently associated with improved emotion regulation, social skills, and lower levels of behavioral difficulties among children (Bailey et al., 2022; Futterer et al., 2022; Gabas et al., 2021; Gingras et al., 2023; Wang et al., 2021). In contrast, non-supportive reactions may impair emotional development, increasing the risk of social withdrawal, aggression, or internalizing symptoms (Denham & Bassett, 2019; I. Li et al., 2021).

Although much is known about the effects of teacher emotion socialization on child outcomes, less is understood about what drives variation in teachers’ emotional responses. A growing body of evidence suggests that individual factors—such as age and educational level—as well as institutional variables like job stress may significantly influence how teachers respond to children’s negative affect (Clayback & Williford, 2021; Jeon et al., 2018). For example, older teachers may bring greater emotional maturity or self-regulation, potentially enhancing their capacity for empathy and patience (Milojevic, 2022). Educational attainment may also shape responses, with more highly trained teachers demonstrating deeper awareness of emotional development and child-centered practices (Caires et al., 2023; Pattiasina et al., 2024; Samnøy et al., 2022; Schelhorn et al., 2023; Shankland et al., 2024). However, empirical findings on these associations remain mixed.

1.3. Job Stress, Emotional Competence, and the Prosocial Classroom Framework

One institutional factor that has garnered considerable attention is work-related stress, which is especially prevalent in early childhood education settings. Preschool teachers frequently face high emotional demands, limited resources, and under-recognition of their professional role—factors that contribute to chronic stress and burnout (S. Li et al., 2020; Sandilos et al., 2023; Terzić-Šupić et al., 2020; Xu et al., 2023). Work stress can undermine emotional regulation, reduce capacity for empathy, and increase the likelihood of non-supportive reactions during challenging classroom situations (Buettner et al., 2016; Clayback & Williford, 2021; Jeon et al., 2018). This dynamic is well captured in the Prosocial Classroom model (Jennings & Greenberg, 2009; Jennings et al., 2021), which highlights how teachers’ social-emotional competence—including emotion regulation, relational skills, and well-being—serves as a foundation for positive teacher–child interactions and classroom climate. Integrating this framework helps contextualize our focus on both individual (e.g., age) and institutional (e.g., job stress) variables as determinants of teachers’ capacity to engage in supportive emotion socialization practices.

Additionally, the concept of emotional competence—teachers’ ability to recognize, understand, and regulate emotions in themselves and others—forms a critical foundation for supportive emotion socialization. As Jennings and Greenberg (2009) emphasize, emotionally competent educators are more likely to maintain warm, responsive classrooms even under stress. Further deepening this perspective, emotional competence includes core components such as emotional awareness, accurate expression, empathy, and regulation in social contexts. These skills enable teachers to detect subtle emotional cues in children, respond sensitively, and remain emotionally stable under pressure. Unlike trait-based emotional intelligence, emotional competence is shaped by both individual disposition and contextual factors, including professional development and institutional support. When teachers possess high emotional competence, they are more likely to buffer the effects of job stress and maintain consistent emotion socialization practices (Milojevic, 2022). Recent work also suggests that emotional competence may mediate the relationship between stress and punitive reactions (Byun & Jeon, 2023), highlighting its critical role in both prevention and intervention frameworks.

Despite the theoretical relevance of these individual and institutional variables, few studies have empirically examined how preschool teachers’ emotion socialization strategies are shaped by both types of factors simultaneously. Most prior research has focused on parent–child dynamics or general teacher well-being, without linking these to specific emotional response patterns in classroom settings (Curby et al., 2021; Denham, 2023; Fatahi et al., 2022; Silkenbeumer et al., 2024). Moreover, studies tend to overlook the cultural and contextual variability of early childhood education, especially within under-researched regions such as Greece, where teachers may face unique structural and psychosocial demands (Birbili & Hedges, 2021; Stamatoglou, 2024). Expanding on this, recent comparative research suggests that teacher emotion socialization practices are shaped by sociocultural values, educational policy traditions, and professional identity norms that vary across countries (Hayik & Weiner-Levy, 2019; Jiang et al., 2021; Pan et al., 2024). For example, in collectivist societies teachers may emphasize emotional restraint to promote group harmony, whereas in more individualistic contexts they may encourage open emotional expression. Situating the Greek findings within such a cross-cultural framework may help explain why certain supportive or non-supportive strategies are more prevalent or socially reinforced.

1.4. The Greek ECEC Context and the Present Study

Early childhood education in Greece has shown marked progress in recent years, particularly following policy reforms such as the introduction of compulsory pre-primary education for all four-year-olds (OECD, 2024). Participation rates among children aged 3 and over have approached the EU average, reaching 84% in 2022, while 85.2% of children were enrolled in 2021 (European Commission, 2025). However, enrolment for children under the age of 3 remains significantly below the EU average—only 17.1% compared to the EU’s 35.1%—highlighting persistent gaps in accessibility and equity. Greece’s early childhood education and care system is divided between educational and care sectors, with the Ministry of Education overseeing provision for children aged 4 to 6, and local authorities managing services for younger children. This structural divide contributes to disparities in staffing qualifications, curriculum implementation, and quality standards. Critical challenges in the system include limited service availability, high costs, and regional inequities, with children from disadvantaged or migrant backgrounds facing particular barriers to access (European Commission, 2025; OECD, 2024). These systemic issues have direct implications for the daily practices of preschool teachers, especially in areas related to emotional development and socialization. As educators work within diverse and often under-resourced classroom environments, understanding how individual and institutional factors shape their emotion socialization strategies is essential to supporting the holistic development of young children in Greece’s early education settings.

Teacher preparation and professional learning are also likely to shape how emotion socialization strategies are enacted in classrooms. In Greece, preschool teachers in public kindergartens typically enter the profession through university-based initial teacher education programs that emphasize early childhood pedagogy and child development, while continuing professional development opportunities may vary in availability and focus across regions and initiatives (Giannakopoulos et al., 2014; Papadopoulou et al., 2014). In policy contexts characterized by under-resourcing and uneven staff support, structured and sustained training that explicitly targets emotion coaching and teachers’ own stress regulation may be particularly important for supporting consistent use of supportive responses in daily practice. Situating teacher emotion socialization within this training and support landscape helps clarify why examining job stress and teacher characteristics is educationally relevant and can inform both initial preparation and in-service professional development priorities.

Building on this literature and the specific features of the Greek early childhood education and care system, the present study had two main aims. First, we examined how preschool teachers’ job stress relates to their use of supportive (emotion-focused, problem-focused, and expressive encouragement) and non-supportive (punitive, minimizing, distress) emotion socialization strategies in the classroom. Second, we investigated the extent to which teacher age is associated with supportive and non-supportive responses to children’s negative emotions. Based on prior work, we expected higher job stress to be associated with more frequent non-supportive responses and lower use of supportive strategies, and older age to be associated with more supportive strategies.

The study was guided by the following research questions:

(RQ1) How is preschool teachers’ job stress associated with their use of supportive and non-supportive emotion socialization strategies in the classroom?

(RQ2) To what extent is teacher age associated with teachers’ supportive and non-supportive responses to children’s negative emotions?

(RQ3) How can these patterns inform teacher education, professional development, and broader efforts to support emotion socialization in early childhood education in Greece?

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Participants

Participants were recruited using convenience sampling via online professional groups of early childhood educators. Specifically, the researcher posted an invitation and survey link in multiple closed social media groups created by members of university early childhood education departments. These groups include teachers from multiple regions of Greece, which broadens geographic coverage. However, because we do not have census data on how many preschool teachers work in each region or their demographic breakdown, we cannot claim that the sample is fully representative of all Greek preschool educators. All full-time preschool teachers were eligible to participate. All participants were employed in public kindergartens under the Greek Ministry of Education, working with children aged 4–6 years in early childhood education settings. This situates the findings within the context of formal, curriculum-based preschool education in Greece. A total of 101 preschool teachers completed the questionnaire. Because the invitation was posted in closed social-media groups, an overall response rate could not be calculated. Sample characteristics are summarized in Table 1. The sample consisted predominantly of female teachers, with a mean age of 42.3 years and a mean teaching experience of 12.6 years. Seventy-eight percent held a university-level degree specifically in early childhood education, and 22% held a post-secondary diploma in a related field. For analytic simplicity and because detailed data on diploma curricula (e.g., one-year vs. two-year programs) were not available, educational level was dichotomized as ‘university degree’ versus ‘post-secondary diploma.’ Given the limited variability in educational level (two categories with an imbalanced distribution), education was retained as a descriptive background characteristic rather than a primary explanatory predictor in the main analyses. Future research should collect more granular information on diploma length and content to examine whether specific training pathways differentially relate to emotion socialization strategies.

Table 1. Sample characteristics (N = 101).

Variable	Value
Gender
–Female	97%
–Male	3%
Age (years)	M = 42.3 (SD = 8.7)
Teaching experience (years)	M = 12.6 (SD = 6.4)
Education level
–University degree	78%
–Post-secondary diploma	22%
Urbanicity
–Urban area	61%
–Semi-urban area	39%

2.2. Procedure and Ethical Issues

Data collection took place online during September–October 2024. After receiving institutional review board exemption, the researcher shared a brief description of the study and a secure survey link within closed social media groups for early childhood educators, which are administered by faculty members in pedagogy departments across various regions of Greece. These groups include current and former preschool teachers, ensuring broad geographic representation. To minimize potential coercion, invitations were posted by group moderators; the researcher did not personally contact individual teachers. Prospective participants first encountered an informed consent screen detailing the study’s purpose—namely, to examine how job stress and age relate to teachers’ emotional responses to children—as well as emphasizing that participation was voluntary, anonymous, and confidential. Only full-time preschool teachers who agreed to participate were allowed to proceed to the questionnaire.

Once informed consent was provided, participants completed the online questionnaire. The survey remained open for six weeks, and no incentives were offered. To confirm eligibility and prevent ineligible respondents from proceeding, the first survey page asked teachers to indicate whether they were full-time preschool educators; those who did not meet these criteria were automatically routed to an “ineligible” screen and could not advance. The online platform also prevented multiple submissions from the same browser session: once a teacher submitted the survey, any subsequent attempts from the same device and browser were blocked. No additional IP address monitoring was used, but this built-in duplicate-entry check ensured that each participant could only complete the questionnaire once. Responses were automatically recorded in a password-protected database, with each submission assigned a unique code to guarantee anonymity. At no point were personally identifying details—such as names or e-mail addresses—collected. Because the entire process was conducted via a secure online platform, researchers were not physically present during survey completion; however, a notification in each group invitation reminded teachers that they could skip any question or withdraw from the study at any time without penalty. To maximize response rates, group moderators posted reminder notices at two-week intervals during the six-week data-collection period, inviting any teachers who had not yet completed the survey to do so; no further follow-up was conducted after the survey closed. All procedures were conducted in accordance with the principles of the Helsinki Declaration.

2.3. Measures

2.3.1. Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES)

The CCNES (Fabes et al., 2002) assesses how adults respond to children’s displays of negative emotion using 12 hypothetical scenarios. Each is followed by six possible teacher reactions: distress reactions, punitive reactions, minimizing responses, emotion-focused reactions, problem-focused reactions, and expressive encouragement. Participants rated items on a 7-point Likert scale (1 = very unlikely to 7 = very likely). For this study, the CCNES was translated into Greek through forward–backward translation. Although no formal validation study has been published for the Greek version, a previous study has used the CCNES to explore how Greek teachers’ emotional expressiveness and coping strategies relate to students’ social-emotional competence and school adjustment (Poulou & Denham, 2022). Internal consistency in the current sample was satisfactory across all subscales (Cronbach’s α = 0.72–0.85). The CCNES was selected because it is a widely used vignette-based measure that captures a broad range of adults’ emotion socialization responses to children’s negative emotions, including both supportive (emotion-focused, problem-focused, expressive encouragement) and non-supportive (punitive, minimizing, distress) strategies. This structure aligns closely with the study’s theoretical framing. A limitation is that CCNES responses are self-reported reactions to hypothetical scenarios and may not fully reflect teachers’ in-the-moment classroom behavior; additionally, although translation procedures were applied and internal consistency was adequate in the present sample, comprehensive psychometric validation of the Greek version (e.g., confirmatory factor analysis and measurement invariance) remains a priority for future work.

2.3.2. Child Care Workers’ Job Stress Inventory (CCW-JSI)

The CCW-JSI (Curbow et al., 2000) evaluates stress in childcare settings across emotional demands, role conflict, and workload. It contains 51 items rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). The total stress score is calculated as the mean of all items. In this study, the instrument was translated into Greek following standard translation and back-translation procedures. As with the CCNES, no formal Greek validation is currently available, but the scale demonstrated high internal reliability (Cronbach’s α = 0.88) in this sample. The CCW-JSI was chosen because it was developed specifically for childcare settings and captures key dimensions of work-related stress that are theoretically relevant to teachers’ emotional availability and responsiveness (e.g., emotional demands, role conflict, workload). Its use therefore provides a context-appropriate index of job stress and supports comparability with the early childhood workforce literature. Limitations include reliance on self-report, which may be influenced by current mood or response tendencies, and the absence of a formal Greek validation study to date; thus, future research should further examine its factor structure and validity in Greek early childhood education samples.

2.4. Data Management and Analysis

All data were entered into SPSS (Version 27.0) and screened for outliers, normality, and missing values. During screening, no values on any CCNES subscale or on the CCW-JSI total score exceeded ±3 standard deviations from their respective means, so no outliers were removed. Missing data amounted to fewer than 2% of all survey items: specifically, 1.2% of CCNES items and 0.8% of CCW-JSI items were left unanswered. Little’s MCAR test (χ² = 15.62, p = 0.74) indicated that missing values were missing completely at random. Consequently, listwise deletion was used in all analyses. This approach was selected because missingness was minimal (<2%) and consistent with an MCAR mechanism. Descriptive statistics were computed for demographic and psychological variables. To account for teacher age while emphasizing the cross-sectional nature of the study, partial correlations were computed between job stress (CCW-JSI) and each CCNES subscale controlling for age. To examine whether age-related differences in supportive responses suggested a non-linear functional form, we additionally compared mean problem-focused reactions and expressive encouragement scores across ordered age bands using one-way ANOVA and tested the quadratic (curvature) component via polynomial contrasts. Given the non-probability (convenience) sampling approach, p-values are reported using p < 0.05 as a conventional reference point and should be interpreted as descriptive indices of the observed associations rather than as a basis for population-level inference. Accordingly, interpretation focused primarily on standardized effect sizes, as reflected in the magnitude and direction of the partial correlation coefficients (pr).

3. Results

3.1. Descriptive Statistics

Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics for the six subscales of the CCNES and the overall job stress score derived from the CCW-JSI. Among emotional response styles, the highest mean score was observed in the problem-focused reactions subscale (M = 5.71, SD = 0.73), while the lowest was in distress reactions (M = 3.07, SD = 1.22). The mean overall job stress score was 3.78 (SD = 0.51), reflecting moderate to high levels of job stress.

Table 2. Descriptive statistics for CCNES and CCW-JSI scales (N = 101).

Scale/Subscale	Mean (M)	Standard Deviation (SD)
CCNES
–Distress Reactions	3.07	1.22
–Punitive Reactions	3.28	1.19
–Minimizing Reactions	3.39	1.11
–Emotion-Focused Reactions	5.12	0.81
–Problem-Focused Reactions	5.71	0.73
–Expressive Encouragement	5.34	0.77
CCW-JSI	3.78	0.51

Note. CCNES = Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale; CCW-JSI = Child Care Workers’ Job Stress Inventory.

3.2. Age-Controlled Partial Correlations

Partial correlation analyses were conducted to examine associations between job stress and teachers’ emotion socialization strategies while controlling for teacher age. As shown in Table 3, job stress was positively associated with non-supportive responses, including distress reactions (pr = 0.23, p = 0.021), punitive reactions (pr = 0.32, p = 0.001), and minimizing reactions (pr = 0.24, p = 0.018). Conversely, job stress was negatively associated with supportive strategies, including emotion-focused reactions (pr = −0.37, p < 0.001), problem-focused reactions (pr = −0.25, p = 0.013), and expressive encouragement (pr = −0.21, p = 0.040). Overall, higher job stress was associated with greater use of non-supportive responses and lower use of supportive strategies, even after accounting for age differences among teachers. To explore whether the age patterns for supportive responses suggested a markedly non-linear functional form, we examined mean supportive CCNES scores across age bands. Supportive responses increased monotonically with age: for problem-focused reactions, mean scores were 5.72 (ages 20–30), 6.02 (ages 31–40), and 6.11 (ages ≥41); for expressive encouragement, mean scores were 5.53, 5.97, and 6.17, respectively. The corresponding omnibus tests indicated a statistically significant age-group difference for expressive encouragement (p = 0.037) and a similar but weaker pattern for problem-focused reactions (p = 0.097). To explicitly test whether these age patterns suggested curvature, we evaluated the quadratic (non-linear) component across the ordered age bands (polynomial contrast). The quadratic component was not statistically supported for either problem-focused reactions (p = 0.494) or expressive encouragement (p = 0.563). Accordingly, these descriptive checks are consistent with an approximately monotonic (near-linear) age pattern in this sample rather than a markedly curvilinear relationship.

Table 3. Partial correlations between CCW-JSI and CCNES subscales controlling for age (N = 101).

CCNES Subscale	pr	p-Value
Distress Reactions	0.23	0.021
Punitive Reactions	0.32	0.001
Minimizing Reactions	0.24	0.018
Emotion-Focused Reactions	−0.37	<0.001
Problem-Focused Reactions	−0.25	0.013
Expressive Encouragement	−0.21	0.040

Note. pr = partial correlation controlling for age (standardized effect size). CCNES = Coping with Children’s Negative Emotions Scale; CCW-JSI = Child Care Workers’ Job Stress Inventory.

4. Discussion

The present study examined how preschool teachers’ responses to children’s negative emotions are shaped by teacher age and job stress within the Greek early childhood education context. Situated within the broader field of education sciences, the study contributes quantitative evidence on how teacher well-being conditions the emotional climate of preschool classrooms. By focusing on Greek public kindergartens, it extends international research on teacher stress and social-emotional learning to an under-researched educational system.

Consistent with our hypotheses, higher job stress was robustly associated with increased use of non-supportive reactions—specifically punitive, minimizing, and distress reactions. Conversely, lower job stress was related to greater use of supportive strategies, including emotion-focused, problem-focused, and expressive encouragement responses. Descriptively, older teachers tended to report higher scores on supportive responses, particularly problem-focused reactions and expressive encouragement, with a monotonic increase across age bands.

The finding that higher job stress is associated with more non-supportive and fewer supportive emotional responses aligns with existing emotion socialization and stress-reactivity frameworks (Byun & Jeon, 2023; Clayback & Williford, 2021; Jennings et al., 2021; Jeon et al., 2018). According to these models, chronic job stress depletes teachers’ emotional resources, impedes self-regulation, and heightens reactive behaviors in challenging situations. When under stress, educators may have less capacity for patience, perspective-taking, and empathetic engagement, leading to more punitive or dismissive responses (Buettner et al., 2016; Clayback & Williford, 2021; Jeon et al., 2018). Our data corroborate these theoretical predictions, as evidenced by consistent patterns showing that higher job stress is linked to more frequent use of non-supportive emotional responses and less frequent use of supportive strategies.

Age’s positive association with supportive responses—specifically problem-focused strategies and expressive encouragement—suggests that emotional maturity and professional experience enhance teachers’ capacity to respond constructively to children’s negative affect. Older educators may have developed more effective coping mechanisms, greater pedagogical confidence, and higher emotional regulation skills over their careers. This aligns with prior findings indicating that years of teaching experience correlate with improved classroom emotional climates and underscores the importance of mentorship programs that pair novice teachers with seasoned colleagues to foster skill transfer (Clayback & Williford, 2021; Jeon et al., 2018; Milojevic, 2022). Additionally, recent research suggests that emotional competence may serve as a moderating or mediating factor in the relationship between job stress and teachers’ emotional responses. Teachers with high emotional competence may be better equipped to regulate their own stress reactivity and maintain supportive interactions even in high-demand environments (Byun & Jeon, 2023). Integrating emotional competence into teacher support frameworks—through reflection, skill-building, and coaching—could help explain variation in emotional socialization outcomes and strengthen stress-resilience among educators.

Because participants were recruited through online professional networks spanning multiple regions of Greece, our sample reflects a diverse group of full-time preschool educators working in both urban and semi-urban settings. Within this varied landscape, it is important to recognize the ongoing institutional constraints that shape educators’ working conditions. Although recent policy reforms have expanded access to pre-primary education, systemic challenges persist—particularly with regard to fragmented service governance, regional disparities in infrastructure, and limited investment in staff support and classroom resources (European Commission, 2025; OECD, 2024). These conditions may exacerbate job stress, especially in under-resourced classrooms where teachers are expected to meet rising pedagogical and emotional demands with minimal external support. Such stressors are not merely contextual but play a meaningful role in shaping how educators manage emotional interactions with children, reinforcing the importance of situating emotion socialization practices within their institutional realities.

4.1. Implications for Policy, Practice, and Teacher Education

The present findings underscore the urgent need for multi-level interventions that address both individual teacher well-being and systemic constraints within the Greek early childhood education and care system. Because higher job stress was consistently associated with more frequent non-supportive responses and less frequent supportive responses, stress cannot be treated as a background variable; it is a core condition that shapes whether teachers are able to engage in emotion coaching or default to punitive and minimizing strategies. At the same time, the association of older age with more supportive practices suggests that emotional competence and classroom calm can be cultivated over time, pointing to the importance of intentional supports across the professional life course.

From a teacher education perspective, emotion socialization and stress management should be treated as core professional competences rather than optional add-ons. Initial teacher education programs in Greece could incorporate dedicated modules on emotion socialization in early childhood education, integrating coursework on children’s emotional development, teachers’ emotional competence, and self-regulation with supervised practicum observations focused specifically on teacher–child emotional interactions. Theory-based seminars on the prosocial classroom and emotional competence can be combined with case discussions and micro-teaching exercises in which student teachers rehearse emotion-focused and problem-focused responses to children’s distress. Embedding such content in required courses, rather than isolated electives, would signal that managing emotions is a central part of pedagogical work.

For in-service professional development, sustained, collaborative learning formats may be more effective than one-off workshops in supporting lasting changes in emotional responses. Video-based reflection on real classroom episodes—either self-recorded or drawn from anonymized training materials—can help educators identify moments when stress escalates and rehearse more supportive responses in a low-risk setting. Professional learning communities, peer coaching, and reflective supervision groups can provide spaces where preschool teachers jointly analyze challenging emotional incidents, normalize the emotional demands of their work, and exchange concrete strategies for de-escalation and emotion coaching. Designing these initiatives in partnership with preschool teachers and school leaders is likely to increase their relevance and feasibility, particularly in under-resourced Greek settings.

At the policy and organizational level, reforms are equally critical. The Greek early childhood education and care system continues to face underfunding relative to EU and OECD benchmarks, with public expenditure per child remaining below the OECD average (European Commission, 2025; OECD, 2024). To address the structural origins of job stress, the Ministry of Education and local authorities could prioritize investments aimed at reducing teacher–child ratios, upgrading classroom infrastructure, and ensuring adequate material and pedagogical resources for implementing the official curriculum. Embedding part-time child psychologists or school-based mental health professionals within preschool settings—even on a rotating basis—could offer educators timely, low-barrier access to consultation on emotionally challenging situations and support for their own well-being. Regional initiatives such as teacher wellness workshops, reflective practice groups, and structured mentoring programs pairing novice with experienced teachers would further promote emotional sustainability among educators. Taken together, these policy and practice reforms can foster healthier classroom climates and support more consistent use of supportive emotion socialization practices in Greek preschool settings, aligning everyday classroom work with national goals for high-quality early childhood education.

4.2. Mediterranean Perspective

Although the present study focuses on Greece, the policy implications resonate with broader discussions about early childhood education and care across Mediterranean Europe. Cross-national reports note that several Southern European systems have sought to expand access while still addressing constraints related to staffing, uneven local capacity, and the need for sustained investment in workforce support and quality improvement structures (European Commission, 2025; OECD, 2024). In this wider regional context, our findings support policy approaches that couple access expansion with measures that protect educator well-being—such as stable professional development pathways, organizational supports for stress management, and classroom-level resources that enable emotionally responsive practice. This brief comparison is intended as illustrative rather than a formal cross-country analysis; nevertheless, it underscores that supporting teacher well-being is a region-relevant lever for strengthening the emotional climate of early childhood classrooms (European Commission, 2025; OECD, 2024).

4.3. Limitations and Future Directions

Several limitations of this study must be acknowledged. First, its cross-sectional design precludes causal inferences; while we observed that job stress is associated with more non-supportive responses, it is equally plausible that teachers who habitually use punitive or dismissive strategies perceive greater stress as a consequence of classroom conflict (i.e., reverse causality). Longitudinal designs—tracking teachers’ stress levels and emotional response patterns over multiple academic terms—would better clarify temporal ordering.

Second, reliance on self-report measures (CCNES, CCW-JSI) introduces potential social desirability bias, especially given that emotion-related behaviors may be sensitive. Future research should incorporate a validated social desirability measure to assess whether teachers’ reports of punitive or minimizing responses are influenced by a desire to appear more supportive. In addition, multi-method assessments—such as systematic observations of teacher–child interactions (e.g., video coding of 10-min free-play sessions by blinded raters) or parent-report measures of children’s emotional adjustment—would help triangulate self-report data and provide a more comprehensive understanding of teachers’ emotion socialization practices.

Third, although internal consistency for the Greek translations of CCNES and CCW-JSI was satisfactory, formal psychometric validation (e.g., confirmatory factor analyses) remains outstanding. Subsequent research should include such validation to ensure that subscale structures replicate those of the original instruments.

Fourth, the sample—while representing urban and semi-urban regions—is limited to public kindergartens and excludes rural or private institutions. Because rural schools often contend with different stressors (e.g., transportation issues, smaller local tax bases) and private preschools may have distinct resources and curricula, generalizability beyond this sample is constrained. Future studies should extend to a stratified sample that includes diverse geographic regions and private preschools to capture a wider range of institutional contexts.

Fifth, because participants were recruited through online professional groups using convenience sampling, selection bias may have influenced our findings. Teachers who are more active on social media or connected to university-administered networks may differ (e.g., in stress levels or emotion socialization practices) from those not represented in these groups. Future studies should employ stratified or randomized sampling methods—such as obtaining contact lists from all public preschools across regions—to minimize selection bias and ensure a more representative sample of Greek preschool educators. Because the sample was recruited via convenience sampling rather than random selection, the inferential interpretation of p-values should be treated cautiously; the results are best understood as describing associations in the present sample, with emphasis on effect sizes.

Finally, although we controlled for teachers’ age and self-reported job stress, unmeasured variables—such as teacher burnout, mental health symptoms, perceived administrative support, teacher–child ratio, classroom composition, access to support staff, peer collaboration—might also contribute to emotion socialization strategies. Integrating a broader ecological framework (Bronfenbrenner, 1999) would allow for examination of these nested influences on teacher behavior.

5. Conclusions

This study highlights the association of both teacher age and job stress with preschool teachers’ emotional responses to children’s negative emotions within the Greek early childhood education context. Higher levels of job stress were associated with more frequent use of non-supportive reactions, while older age was related to greater use of supportive strategies. These findings underscore the importance of supporting teachers not only through targeted professional development but also through systemic improvements that reduce daily stressors. In Greece, where early childhood education has expanded but still faces structural fragmentation and resource gaps, such support is especially critical. Investments in educator well-being—through curriculum reform, psychological support services, and equitable funding—can help create emotionally responsive classroom environments that benefit both teachers and young learners. Ultimately, recognizing the dual impact of personal and institutional conditions is key to advancing emotion socialization practices in early education settings.