Congratulations to Colleen M. Fratinardo who on Tuesday, April 14, 2026, successfully defended her final dissertation.
The title of Colleen’s dissertation is: "EXAMINING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN JOB SATISFACTION COMPONENTS AND EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATORS’ WORKPLACE EXPERIENCES IN HAWAI’I."
Overview of Problem: Early childhood educators (ECEs) play a vital role in children's cognitive and social-emotional development, yet the ECE workforce faces persistent challenges — low pay, limited advancement, and demanding working conditions — that threaten workforce stability and program quality.
Research Purpose: This quantitative correlational study examined whether, and to what extent, statistically significant relationships exist between five components of job satisfaction — coworker relations, supervisor relations, nature of the work, pay and promotion, and working conditions — and early childhood educators' workplace experiences in Hawaiʻi.
Research Design: A non-experimental correlational design was used. The primary instrument was the Early Childhood Job Satisfaction Survey (ECJSS; Jorde-Bloom, 1989; Bloom, 2010), grounded in Herzberg's (1959) Two-Factor Theory of Motivation.
Sample: The final analytic sample included 109 educators (lead teachers, assistant teachers, teacher aides, and substitutes) employed in NAEYC-accredited preschools across the Hawaiian Islands. The sample was 97.2% female, with participants drawn from Hawaiʻi Island (45.4%), Oʻahu (26.9%), Maui (17.6%), and Kauaʻi (8.3%).
Data Collection and Analysis: Data were collected via online survey from December 2025 to February 2026. Descriptive statistics, reliability analyses, and Pearson product-moment correlations were conducted using IBM SPSS Statistics (Version 29) at a Bonferroni-corrected alpha of .01.
Findings/Results: All five null hypotheses were rejected. Significant positive correlations were found between overall job satisfaction and all five ECJSS components (all p < .001, large effect sizes): working conditions (r = .85), supervisor relations (r = .78), work itself (r = .71), coworker relations (r = .62), and pay and promotion (r = .60). Subscale means ranged from 3.41 (SD = .60) for pay and promotion to 3.93 (SD = .61) for supervisor relations. The full ECJSS showed excellent reliability (α = .91). No significant differences in overall satisfaction were found across eight demographic variables, with one exception: urban educators reported slightly lower satisfaction than rural educators (t(95) = −2.00, p = .048, d = .40).
Conclusions/Implications: Working conditions emerged as the strongest correlate of overall satisfaction (r = .85), underscoring the importance of physical environment, structural support, and organizational resources for ECE professionals. These findings can inform leadership practices, compensation policy, and professional development initiatives aimed at improving satisfaction and workforce stability across Hawaiʻi's early childhood education sector.
Dissertation Committee Co-Chairs:
Dr. Yiping Wan
Dr. Nora Broege
Dissertation Committee Member:
Dr. Michael Abel
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