The Influence of Early Childhood Teachers’ Childhood Attachment Experiences on Preschooler-teacher Relationships: Examining the Mediating Effect of Psychological Flexibility

Purpose: This study investigated attachment experiences in childhood, psychological flexibility, and the level of preschooler-teacher relationships of early childhood teachers, and analyzed the effect of childhood attachment experiences on preschooler-teacher relationships based on verifying the mediating effect of psychological flexibility. Methods: A survey was conducted with 274 homeroom teachers in charge of infants aged three to five at a domestic Early Childhood Education institution. The collected data were calculated using the SPSS version 26.0 to calculate the mean and standard deviation. Pearson's correlation analysis was conducted to examine relations among the variables. Mediating effects were tested with Model 4 of the PROCESS macro for SPSS version 4.1. Results: First, the childhood attachment experiences of Early Childhood teachers, psychological flexibility, and the level of preschooler-teacher relationships were all above the middle range. Second, psychological flexibility partially mediated the influence of childhood attachment experiences of Early Childhood teachers on preschooler-teacher relationships. Conclusion: This research provides basic data on childhood attachment experiences, psychological flexibility, and the preschooler-teacher relationships of Early Childhood teachers and reveals a high positive influence relationship between these variables. This reveals that Early Childhood teachers need to mentally and institutionally support Early Childhood teachers in order to improve their childhood attachment experiences, psychological flexibility, and move preschooler-teacher relationships to a higher level.