Teachers' role in the socialization of emotion in three child care centers

This observational study examined practices through which child care teachers socialize children's emotion as well as teachers' beliefs about children's emotion socialization. A specific aim was to describe strategies of teacher intervention in response to emotion displayed by children child care centers, and to answer the question of differential interactions based on children's age and gender. Teachers' emotion talk in everyday interaction with children was also analyzed by their function. Teachers' beliefs about emotional competence, the relation of emotion development to other domains of development, their role in children's emotional development, their emotional expression in the classroom, prevalence of expressing or controlling emotion, and display rules were described in detail.;The results of this study were: (a) teachers' preference of positive over negative emotional expression was revealed in their matching or complimenting of positive emotional displays by children; (b) toddler teachers matched and encouraged children's positive emotion expression more often than did preschool teachers; (c) in response to children's negative emotion, toddler teachers used physical comfort and distraction more often than did preschool teachers who relied more on verbal mediation. Preschool teachers helped children infer cause of emotion more frequently than did toddler teachers, and taught them constructive ways of expressing negative emotion more often than did toddler teachers; (d) toddler teachers were more likely to identify emotion words, while preschooler teachers tried to teach children the cause of their emotional states and how to regulate them; (e) in responses to girls' negative emotional expressions, teachers provided more physical comfort and distraction. In response to boys' expressions of negative emotion, teachers expressed more empathy, and they also more frequently provided boys with constructive way to express negative emotion than they did for girls; (f) findings from interviews indicated that teachers shared the same opinion on some, but not all, of their beliefs regarding children's socialization of emotion and their practices; (g) many instances of teachers' socialization of emotion in the child care centers were noted in the detailed records of the classroom observations.;In sum, the findings suggested that teachers in child care centers socialized children's emotional expressions with various strategies. Also, they appeared to have different strategies of emotion socialization depending upon children's age and gender. The results of this study also revealed relatively infrequent teaching about constructive ways of expressing negative emotion and very few occurrences of showing teacher's empathy, implying that teachers' emotional socialization practices need to be improved. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)...