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exacerbated by the findings that suggest turnover itself breeds further turnover
(Whitebrook & Sakai, 2004).If there is a commitment to improving quality, then solving
retention issues becomes as important as improved recruitment. Attracting new staff to
centres faced with these issues becomes a daunting task. According to Doherty and Forer
(2005), solving recruitment and retention issues requires a comprehensive, multi-pronged
approach that includes the need to modify job stressors, increase compensation (wages,
benefits, and working conditions), improve accessibility to training, and address the
“current low level of public respect for the job” (p. 5).
Image.
The way the public views the occupation contributes to a child care teacher’s selfimage.
Public image can affect self-image. When images are positive, a person may be
confident in his or her thoughts and actions. When images are negative, a person may be
doubtful of his or her capabilities and ideas. According to Whitebrook and Saki (2004)
even when child care teachers feel confident about their professional knowledge and
skills in the work setting, they often felt that these competencies, and the intellectual and
emotional challenges, and rewards of working with young children, were “invisible” to
family, friends and associates, and sometimes “even to the parents of the children in their
program” (p. 93). The image of child care work is in drastic need of improvement.
The negative image of child care teachers has at least two major consequences.
First, it perpetuates the view that young children are best cared for by their mothers in
their own homes. Secondly, it may serve to discourage early childhood graduates to seek
employment in the sector (Ferguson, 2002). The barrier to a reframed image that would
improve status rests in an ideological time warp that keeps the field from progressing. A