Facilitating Transformative Experiences with Flow in Early Childhood Educators

Abstract

Early childhood educators play an integral role in establishing a solid foundation for learning in young children. Teachers today are questioning their expectations of adhering to the developmentally inappropriate high-stakes accountability, which includes a multiplicity of externally controlled standards and regulations that dictate what must be implemented in the early childhood classroom setting. These well-trained professionals face a professional identity crisis, often going against their pedagogical beliefs. This crisis has engendered a complex range of emotions experienced by educators today.

The ramifications of this systemic pressure have radically impacted how early childhood educators conduct themselves in the classroom. The intense emotions experienced by teachers have devastatingly impacted the education realm, as teachers experience extreme stress and burnout, resulting in many electing to exit the profession. The core of establishing a solid foundation for learning in young children is the mental health and well-being of the educator.

This mixed-methods study proved that a shift in perspective regarding daily encounters in life poses excellent potential to impact teachers’ outlooks on positively and negatively viewed exchanges with their environments. Facilitating transformative experiences with the motivational concept of flow, the focus of this study, showed great promise to enable teachers to view life exchanges differently than they ever had before, potentially counteracting negative emotions.

During this study, participants attended a 45-minute intervention meeting where they were introduced to the concept of flow, transformative experience, and TE with flow. They were then challenged to notice flow and journal the experiences. Analysis was completed on a one-group pre-and-post-test administration of the transformative experience measurement, along with analysis of NCV journal entries collected over the course of five weeks. As a result of rigorous data analysis, themes from experience conveyed throughout the journals emerged to explain the impact of transformative experiences with flow on early childhood educators’ lives. Findings suggest that within the three characteristics of transformative experience, there is an assortment of positive outcomes for early childhood educators. This study is significant in that it reports research-based outcomes that have the potential to impact how early childhood educators encounter life, both personally and professionally.