Workplace Demands and Emotional Expression Among Early Childhood Educators: A Computational Analysis of Professional Online Discourse

Abstract

Early childhood educators work in settings characterized by heavy regulation, emotional labor, staffing instability, and low pay. Although these conditions are well documented in survey-based research, less is known about how they manifest in the day-to-day language educators use in peer spaces. This study examines 7,506 posts from r/ECEProfessionals, a large online community used by early childhood education practitioners. Using a structured, computer-assisted thematic coding workflow and transformer-based emotion classification, posts were organized into 15 themes and mapped onto an adapted Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) framework. Across the corpus, 56.7% of posts centered on demands when task-level and core job demands were combined, compared with 33.6% focused on resources and 9.6% on career conditions. Emotion estimates indicated a broadly neutral tone overall; however, fear emerged as the most prominent non-neutral emotion. Demand-related categories also exhibited higher levels of sadness and anger than resource-related categories. These findings suggest that professional online discourse in early childhood education reflects a work environment structured more around strain than support. The study offers a practical framework for examining how occupational conditions are discussed and emotionally experienced in large-scale professional texts.