Research into the resilience of kindergarten teachers is fundamental to understand better how their overall psychological well-being can be enhanced and how they can better cope with everyday stress at work. In addition, this research is also relevant to the field of implicit psychology, as their individual characteristics, such as their greater resilience, are associated with more effective stimulation of resilience in early childhood and preschool children. At the same time, it is interesting and useful to analyze the extent to which individual competencies such as socio-emotional competencies determine their resilience. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the extent of resilience and socio-emotional competencies of kindergarten teachers and to analyze their mutual relationship as well as the possibilities of predicting their resilience on the basis of existing socio-emotional competencies. After obtaining consent to conduct the study, two scales were applied to a random sample of N=147 kindergarten teachers (1 male) from 19 kindergartens in seven cities in Primorje-Gorski Kotar County in Croatia. Resilience was measured using the Brief Resilience Scale (BRS) and the CASEL personal assessment and reflection tool was used to measure five dimensions of socio-emotional competencies: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making. Respondents rated their resilience on a 5-point scale and their socio-emotional competencies on a 4-point Likert scale, and both scales showed a satisfactory level of reliability. Descriptive analyses revealed that the kindergarten teachers who participated in this study had moderate levels of resilience and increased levels of socio-emotional competencies. In addition, correlation analyses showed that the resilience of the kindergarten teachers was significantly positively correlated with their self-awareness and self-regulation. Finally, the regression analysis showed a significant main effect of the predictive power of socio-emotional competencies in relation to resilience as a criterion variable. In addition, self-regulation proved to be the only significant predictor among all five socio-emotional competencies when the resilience of kindergarten teachers served as a criterion variable. The results obtained are not only of great importance for the resilience and socio-emotional competencies of kindergarten teachers but also for their overall well-being. Therefore, it is important to consider the importance of their socio-emotional competencies, especially self-regulation, in their studies and lifelong learning programs.

Keywords: CASEL, kindergarten teachers, resilience, socio-emotional competencies.