This study investigates the research trend in early childhood teachers’ happiness and makes
suggestions for future research. The subject consisted of 83 papers in KCI(KCI-candidated) journals
and master or doctor thesis.
The main results were as follows. Firstly, the themes in papers were, in order of frequency,
‘research of early childhood teacher’s happiness-related variables’, ‘research of program development
and effect analysis’, and ‘the meaning of early childhood teacher’s happiness’, while the number of
the papers has rapidly increased since 2012. Secondly, further analysis of the sub-themes of the
papers shows that the papers dealing with early childhood teacher’s happiness-related variables were
focused on job related variable and, socio emotional variables. Thirdly, the major research type was
quantitative research, the majority of the subjects was educare teacher, the popular data collection
method was tests or scales, and the data analysis was mostly performed by relational verification.
From the present investigation, three kinds of research are suggested: happiness program
development and effect analysis, development of measuring scale, and qualitative research.