The Effect of Director’s Empathy and Coaching Leadership on Teacher’s Role Performance and Job Stress at Early Childhood Educational Institutions

This study examined the effect of empathy and coaching leadership of directors of early childhood educational institutions on teachers’ role performance and job stress. To this end, 300 teachers who work at early childhood educational institutions in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea were surveyed and a total of 258 copies of responses were used for the final analysis. Collected data were analyzed through structural equation modeling (SEM) using SPSS 22.0 and AMOS 22.0, and results of the empirical analysis are as follows. First, this study revealed a statistically significant correlation not only between director’s ability to empathize and coaching leadership, but also between sub-variables, such as cognitive empathy and teacher’s role performance. Second, the mediation test with bootstrapping confirmed that the influence of director’s cognitive empathy on teacher’s role performance is mediated by coaching leadership. Through the findings of this study, we suggest the need for directors’ ability to empathize and hope for the directors’ coaching leadership, in addition to empathy, to have a positive impact on teachers’ role performance and job stress.