Abstract:

Quality early and preschool education is directly affected by the quality trained and educated early childhood educators. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to continuously explore needed competencies early childhood educators should possess in the 21st century. Among others, contemporary research studies and educational practice clearly demonstrated that one of the important categories of needed competencies is the one related to the field of fostering mental health and well-being in an educational context. In addition, mental health and well-being competencies are important regarding both: early childhood educators’ mental health and well-being and children’s mental health and well-being. Therefore, this paper is focused on examining early childhood educators' perceptions of their mental health and well-being competencies. With this research aim, a 49-item scale was developed to explore educators’ perceptions and it was adjusted as the online scale to be used in the study. The scale applied showed a high level of reliability. After getting formal permission from the Croatian kindergarten managers, the link to the online scale was sent to educators. Overall, 131 early childhood educators (one male) participated in this study. The collection of data was completely voluntary and anonymous, and the questions applied were open-ended and closed, so they were analyzed at a qualitative and quantitative level. Determined findings within applied descriptive statistics showed a partial agreement of early childhood educators with positive attitudes toward competencies in well-being and mental health, which was expected. In addition, even though findings demonstrated that the educators were aware of the significance of mental health and well-being competencies, they have also emphasized that they lacked described competencies. Therefore, the educators acknowledged the significance of their mental health and well-being competencies (their own mental health and well-being and the children's mental health and well-being) as well as the fact that they need to improve them. Furthermore, the practical implications of this study were discussed since they are related to certain guidelines for study program modification and lifelong learning program creation with the aim of providing educational support for early childhood educators’ professional development.

Keywords:

Children of an early and preschool age, early childhood educators, competencies, mental health, perception, well-being.