Who Carries the Thinking in Early Childhood Teaching?

Early childhood teachers need working arrangements that recognize the thinking behind their teaching. The classroom schedule shows when children eat, play, and rest. It rarely shows who anticipates a difficult transition, remembers a family concern, or checks whether tomorrow's materials are ready. When that responsibility falls mostly to one educator, dividing visible tasks evenly can still leave an uneven mental load.

Imagine a preschool teacher arriving with several unfinished questions already in mind. Has the substitute received the updated routine? Who will follow up with the family whose child struggled yesterday? Will there be coverage for planning? Meanwhile, she remembers an appointment for her own child. This imagined situation invites us to examine how responsibility accumulates across home and work. My concern is how teachers can use inquiry to understand these pressures and influence the conditions creating them. A useful starting question is: Who carries the responsibility for making sure everything happens?

Understanding the work that stays in our minds

Mental load includes the cognitive and emotional burden associated with organizing household and childcare responsibilities. It involves remembering, anticipating, coordinating, and carrying concern about whether needs will be met. Completing a task and managing its completion are different contributions, even when they occur together.

In Beyond Time, Barigozzi and colleagues (2025) combined time diaries with survey responses from 415 heterosexual couples in Italy. Women reported greater organizational responsibility, more emotional fatigue, and lower satisfaction with how responsibilities were divided. Employed women also reported more thoughts about family organization during paid work. Differences between partners' time use were more strongly associated with perceived organizational responsibility than absolute time spent completing tasks.

This working paper examines families rather than early childhood teachers. Its findings describe associations and perceptions; they do not establish causes or represent every family structure. I see it as a prompt for inquiry into teaching, where planning and follow-through also deserve examination. (Barigozzi et al., 2025)

Consider preparing for a family conference. One teacher prints the forms while another identifies concerns, gathers observations, schedules the meeting, anticipates questions, and remembers the follow-up. Both contribute. Yet a checklist showing only completed jobs could miss how much responsibility each person carries. Teachers also make emotionally demanding decisions. They may wonder whether a withdrawn child needs additional support or how to approach a worried parent. Professional concern becomes harder to carry when consultation is unavailable or responsibility remains unclear. We can examine these conditions without treating caring itself as a problem.

Using inquiry to locate the problem

Inquiry gives teachers a disciplined way to move from a general feeling of overload toward a problem they can investigate. We begin with something specific enough to observe. Instead of asking why everyone feels stressed, a teaching team might ask, "Why does preparing family updates depend on one teacher remembering every deadline?" That question leaves room for several explanations. Perhaps responsibilities were never assigned. Perhaps the second teacher lacks access to records. Perhaps both understand their roles, but neither has paid preparation time. Each explanation points toward a different response. Choosing a solution before examining the situation could add work while leaving the original difficulty untouched.

For one week, teachers could collect brief notes during paid preparation time or another covered period. Record the responsibility, who noticed it, who planned it, who completed it, and who checked the outcome. Include interruptions and unfinished follow-up. Use general descriptions without children's names. Keep the exercise short enough to support reflection without becoming another reporting burden.

Perceptions belong in this inquiry too. Each teacher can privately consider how fair the arrangement feels and how often unfinished responsibilities occupy their thoughts after work. These reflections are conversation starters, not a validated assessment. Participation should be voluntary, and colleagues should not have to disclose household circumstances to explain workplace needs. During a team conversation, compare observations with curiosity. If one educator believes responsibilities are shared and another feels continuously responsible, ask which parts each person sees. A disagreement may reveal different definitions of the task. It may also reveal that the person who remembers and monitors the work has become less visible than the person completing it.

Then agree on a problem statement the team can address: "Family updates rely on one teacher because deadlines, access, and follow-up responsibilities are unclear." That statement identifies a working explanation to test. It also gives the director something concrete to support. A teacher might say, "I can prepare the family updates during my scheduled planning time, but I need someone else to monitor the deadlines and follow-up. Can we decide who will do that?" This request names the task, the limit, and the support needed. It gives colleagues a specific arrangement to consider.

When discussing differences, allow people to explain what a responsibility involves before deciding it is minor. A task that looks brief may require repeated decisions or coordination. Listening can reveal where expectations exceed the time, information, or authority someone has been given.

Sharing responsibility for the whole task

A practical response begins by assigning responsibility across the full task. For family updates, teachers might agree who gathers observations, prepares each update, communicates with families, and tracks promised follow-up. Each person needs access to information, a reasonable deadline, and authority to make decisions within the agreed role. Asking someone to help while another person keeps directing every step can preserve the original burden. Teachers should decide together what completion means. Is an update finished when it is drafted, when the family receives it, or when a concern has been addressed? An agreed definition prevents one educator from silently carrying the remaining work. Responsibilities can rotate where appropriate, with support for colleagues learning unfamiliar tasks.

Shared tools can help when they replace repeated remembering. A simple calendar or existing communication system may show deadlines and follow-up. The team should agree who maintains it and retire any duplicate record. If teachers must enter the same information in several places, the tool may increase the load it was intended to reduce. Leadership support matters here. The Center for the Study of Child Care Employment's Early Childhood Workforce Index 2024 identifies sufficient staffing, paid time away from children for professional responsibilities, and educator input into decisions as important workplace supports. It also notes that paid planning time is not guaranteed for many early educators. (McLean et al., 2024).

Directors can examine whether their schedules actually provide those conditions. Protected preparation time requires reliable classroom coverage. Clear expectations about messages after work can reduce uncertainty about when a response is due. Teachers also need a dependable route for consultation when a child's needs exceed what the classroom team can address alone.

Home-based educators may have fewer people available to share responsibilities. Their inquiry might focus on reducing duplicate paperwork, simplifying routines, or requesting preparation support through a network. Capacity affects what is possible. Teachers can identify obstacles, but leaders, funders, and support organizations must address problems requiring staffing, money, or policy changes. At home, an educator who chooses to discuss mental load might use similar questions about responsibility and follow-through. These conversations remain personal. Workplace support should be available regardless of whether an educator can change household arrangements.

Testing changes and learning from the results

Once the team chooses a response, test it on a manageable scale. For two weeks, one classroom could use agreed responsibilities for family updates and a protected preparation period. Before starting, decide what improvement would look like. Useful indicators might include fewer reminder messages, fewer unfinished updates, less work after hours, and a fairer distribution of follow-up.

At the end, review both the work and the experience of doing it. Were updates completed on time? Did families receive clear information? Did both teachers understand their responsibilities? Did either person spend more time coordinating the new arrangement? A process can appear efficient while leaving one person responsible for preventing every mistake. If the change helps, keep it and revisit it after a month. If it fails, investigate why. Perhaps the preparation period disappeared whenever someone was absent. Perhaps the system required access one teacher did not have. Perhaps an assigned task exceeded the time available. Revising the explanation is part of inquiry, rather than evidence that the teachers were incapable of solving problems.

Teams should also watch for unintended consequences. A rotation could move the entire burden to an assistant with less authority. A shared record could become a tool for monitoring individuals. Agree that the inquiry will guide improvements to working arrangements. It should give teachers a safer way to describe problems and propose changes. I would begin a staff discussion by inviting educators to name one responsibility that remains in their minds after the workday ends. Then I would ask what keeps that responsibility there and what support could help resolve it. The answers may lead to a small classroom adjustment or a larger leadership decision.

Teachers already use inquiry when they observe children and reconsider how to support learning. Applying that same care to working conditions can make overlooked responsibilities visible. Start with one recurring problem, listen to the people carrying it, and test a change they help design. Return to their experience when deciding whether it worked.

References

Barigozzi, F., Biroli, P., Monfardini, C., Montinari, N., Pisanelli, E., & Vitellozzi, S. (2025). Beyond time: Unveiling the invisible burden of mental load [Preprint] https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2505.11426

McLean, C., Austin, L. J. E., Powell, A., Jaggi, S., Kim, Y., Knight, J., Muñoz, S., & Schlieber, M. (2024). Early childhood workforce index 2024. Center for the Study of Child Care Employment, University of California. https://cscce.berkeley.edu/workforce-index-2024/

About the Author

Victoria Long-Coleman, Ph.D., MBA is the Founder and Principal of Early Childhood Innovations. An early childhood educator, leadership, coach, author, speaker, she focuses on strengthening educators, developing leaders, and translating research into practical approaches that improve early childhood systems.

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