The purpose of this study was to explore how the temperament and personality characteristics of novice public kindergarten teachers manifest in their experiences of job stress and teaching adaptation, and what meanings these hold. To this end, seven p...
The purpose of this study was to explore how the temperament and personality characteristics of novice public kindergarten teachers manifest in their experiences of job stress and teaching adaptation, and what meanings these hold. To this end, seven public kindergarten teachers with less than three years of service were selected as research participants for in-depth interviews. The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) was employed to assess participants' temperament and personality traits, while questionnaires were distributed to identify patterns of job stress and teaching adaptation. The processes of job stress and teaching adaptation experienced in actual educational settings were analyzed from multiple perspectives. The research questions designed to accomplish the study's objectives are as follows:
Research Question 1: How is job stress experienced according to the temperament and personality of novice public kindergarten teachers?
Research Question 2: How are the temperament and personality of novice public kindergarten teachers reflected in the process of teaching adaptation?
Data collection for this study was conducted over approximately nine months, from February to October 2025, utilizing and analyzing the researcher's field journal and participants' personal materials. The collected data were analyzed using the constant comparison method, a commonly employed analytical approach in qualitative research. The constant comparison method proceeds through three stages: open coding, categorization, and category verification. To ensure the validity of research data, triangulation was also implemented.
The research findings are as follows. First, while the seven research participants experienced varying degrees and circumstances of job stress according to their temperament and personality, they commonly encountered stress in three major aspects. Initially, stress arose from difficulties in interpersonal relationship formation. Novice teachers struggled with relationships involving administrators, colleague teachers, and parents. Subsequently, stress stemmed from excessive administrative duties. Even regarding instruction-related administrative tasks, inexperienced novice teachers faced difficulties, and they found non-instructional administrative work particularly overwhelming. Finally, the discrepancy between pre-service expectations and post-entry realities served as a stress factor for novice teachers. Nevertheless, participants uniformly expressed that teaching life was rewarding and that they experienced happiness through their young students.
Second, the process of teaching adaptation differed according to the temperament and personality of novice public kindergarten teachers. Prior to identifying teaching adaptation types, participants underwent a process of understanding their temperament and personality through the TCI assessment. Participants stated that this process exerted a positive influence on teaching adaptation. They also indicated that the appropriate timing for TCI assessment was "after entering the teaching profession." Teaching adaptation could be categorized into four types based on teaching-learning efficacy, classroom management efficacy, collaborative relationships with colleagues, teaching satisfaction, and degree of job stress: Growth-oriented, Maladaptive, Smooth-sailing, and Struggling types. These types exhibited differences according to participants' distinctive temperament and personality characteristics, the details of which are as follows.
First, teachers belonging to the Growth-oriented type revelaed high scores on NS4, a subscale of Novelty Seeking (NS); low scores on HA2, a subscale of Harm Avoidance (HA); and somewhat low scores on PS4, a subscale of Persistence (PS). Among the character dimensions of Self-Directedness (SD), their SD3 subscale and ST2, a subscale of Self-Transcendence (ST), were below average. Additionally, they demonstrated the characteristic of low Cooperativeness (CO).
Conversely, teachers corresponding to the Maladaptive type showed below-average scores on the temperament dimension of Reward Dependence (RD) and the character dimensions of Cooperativeness (CO) and Self-Transcendence (ST). Among the temperament dimensions, the NS1 subscale of Novelty Seeking (NS) was relatively low, whereas NS3 and NS4 showed slightly elevated scores.
Next, teachers of the Smooth-sailing type were characterized by high scores on Harm Avoidance (HA), one of the temperament dimensions. Meanwhile, NS1, a subscale of Novelty Seeking (NS), and SD4, a subscale of Self-Directedness (SD), were slightly below average, and ST1, a subscale of Self-Transcendence (ST), also showed low scores.
Finally, the teacher corresponding to the Struggling type exhibited high levels across all temperament dimensions—Novelty Seeking (NS), Harm Avoidance (HA), and Reward Dependence (RD) (HHH)—and low levels across all character dimensions—Self-Directedness (SD), Cooperativeness (CO), and Self-Transcendence (ST) (LLL).
This study employed the standardized assessment instrument TCI to identify the temperament and personality of novice public kindergarten teachers and to explore how these dimensions are reflected in the patterns of job stress they experience and in their teaching adaptation processes. Through this investigation, the study sought to reveal that novice teachers should not be simplistically understood as immature educators in the early stages of professional entry, but rather that their experiences of job stress and patterns of teaching adaptation manifest diversely according to individual temperament and personality. Drawing upon these understandings, the significance of this study lies in providing foundational data to prevent teacher attrition among novice teachers and to support their smoother adaptation to the teaching profession.