ECEC educators play a vital role in educating and caring for children during the first five years of life, a critical period for learning, growth, and development. University-trained early childhood teachers make a particularly significant contribution to overall service quality. This exploratory interview study brings an ecological lens to the perspectives of nine Australian university-trained early childhood teachers on the nature and quantity of their work and workload. As part of the mixed methods Early Learning Work Matters project, this Phase II interview study supports findings from the prior international systematic review that work in ECEC is complex and demanding. Interviews yielded new findings indicating the potential changing nature of early childhood teachers’ work, some of whom reported little to no capacity to focus on service quality. Concerningly, analysis revealed burdensome influences at all ecological levels, with only a few uplifting microsystems which were inconsistently experienced by participants.

幼儿保育教育工作者在儿童生命的前五年（学习、成长和发展的关键时期）的教育和照顾方面发挥着至关重要的作用。受过大学培训的幼儿教师对整体服务质量做出了特别重要的贡献。这项探索性访谈研究从生态角度审视了九位受过澳大利亚大学培训的幼儿教师对其工作和工作量的性质和数量的看法。作为混合方法早期学习工作很重要项目的一部分，这项第二阶段访谈研究支持了先前国际系统审查的结果，即幼儿保育中心的工作复杂且要求很高。访谈得出的新发现表明幼儿教师的工作性质可能发生变化，其中一些教师表示几乎没有能力关注服务质量。令人担忧的是，分析揭示了所有生态层面的繁重影响，只有少数令人振奋的微系统，参与者的体验不一致。