LAUSR

Kindergarten directors’ leadership, early childhood teachers’ well-being, and enabling organizational structure are important components of ecological development in kindergartens. To understand the relationships among the three, identification of the driving force for the sustainable development of kindergartens in rural China must occur. This study used the Kindergarten Care and Education Leadership Questionnaire, the Enabling Organizational Structure Scale, and the Teacher Well-being Scale as research instruments to explore these relationships in an online survey of rural early childhood teachers (N = 1958, 98.3% female, 23.5% unmarried, 76.5% married, 68.8% county, and 31.2% rural). The study found that the overall levels of rural early childhood teachers’ well-being, director leadership, and enabling organizational structure were all in the medium to high range. There is a two-way effect between director leadership and enabling organizational structure, with kindergarten directors’ leadership positively predicting early childhood teachers’ well-being, but this effect is mainly mediated through the enabling organization. Therefore, to achieve sustainable development in rural kindergartens, emphasis needs to be placed on building an enabling organizational structure based on early childhood teachers’ well-being and kindergarten directors’ leadership.