08. Health and Wellbeing Education
Paper
Teacher’s Interpretations of Emotional Situations in the Classrooms: Co-regulation in the Diversity of Emotions as a Pedagogical Strategy
Elin Marie Frivold Kostøl1, Kristiina Mänty2
1University of Agder, Norway; 2University of Oulu, Finland
Presenting Author: Kostøl, Elin Marie Frivold
Emotions play a crucial role in school contexts concerning a child’s academic achievements, social functioning, and well-being (Denham et al., 2012; Valiente et al., 2020). As schools are complex emotional arenas, teachers constantly experience emotional situations in the classroom involving children with emotions. More specifically, the teachers get emotionally involved as they interact with children (Valiente et al., 2020). These interactions can also act as learning situations for children, where they can learn from emotions and regulate them (Kurki et al., 2017). For the interactions to be beneficial for supporting children’s learning, it requires a good teacher-student relationship as well as the teachers being sensitive to the child’s signals and needs and attuned to the child’s emotional state (Guo et al., 2021). These emotional interactions are reciprocal: children’s emotional displays and behaviours affect the teacher’s emotions and actions and vice versa (Lavelli et al., 2019). Despite a variety of research exploring this reciprocal relationship at a general level, exploring teacher’s emotions and their impact on students (Frenzel et al., 2021), there are less contextualized studies on how teacher’s own interpretations and related emotions in emotional interactions are connected to how they interact with the emotional child. Therefore, more research is needed on how teachers interpret emotional situations and what kind of emotions they themselves experience in these situations.
Co-regulation of emotions has been used as a term to describe adult-child interactions, where the adult supports and helps the child to learn to regulate their emotions (Lunkenheimer & Lobo, 2020). Prior research indicates that children are highly dependent upon these interactions in order to regulate their emotions, internal emotional states, and behaviours (Bernier et al., 2010; Erdmann & Hertel, 2019). In the school context, teachers can become important co-regulators of the children’s emotions (Spilt et al., 2021). More specifically, as the teachers set the standards for appropriate social behaviour, the teachers become role models who support the children in handling their emotions (Valiente et al., 2020). However, teachers are not always aware of their impact as co-regulators of children’s emotions (Kurki et al., 2016; Silkenbeumer et al., 2018). Hence, understanding how teachers identify their own emotions and thoughts and the way these emotions and thoughts affect their co-regulation with the emotional child, is needed.
The aim of this study is to explore teacher’s own reflections, thoughts and emotions about classroom situations and the ways these contribute to the teacher’s co-regulation of the child’s emotions. Hence, the following research questions (RQ) are:
1) How do teachers interpret emotional classroom situations?
2) How do these interpretations contribute to teacher’s co-regulation in emotional classroom situations?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedIn this study, the participants were seven teachers from three different primary schools in Norway. There were all teaching children in 1st and 2nd grade (age: 6-8 years). The data material was collected using video film of their teaching in classrooms and Stimulated Recall Interviews as methods. In addition, and as an extension of the Stimulated Recall Interview, a brief in-depth interview was conducted to ensure the participants elaborated reflections upon their and the child’s emotions, behaviours, and thoughts in general as well as from a classroom perspective. First, teachers were individually filmed teaching in the classroom and with the first author present. Two cameras were used to film, and the teachers were carrying a microphone. The total amount of collected video data material was 70 hours. Second, Stimulated Recall Interviews were conducted individually where the participants were shown about five selected video clips that lasted between 30 seconds to 1,50 minutes. The video clips were selected from the video material made by the first author based on following criteria: (1) emotions of high intensity, (2) emotions that are explicitly expressed by the teacher or the pupil, (3) emotions occurring either individually or in group settings and (4) emotions setting the mood in the classroom. In the interviews, the participants were asked open questions like “Can you describe what is happening here?”, “How do you think the pupil experienced this situation?” and “Can you recall your own feelings in this situation?”. The analysis of the interviews was conducted with an explorative approach aiming not to be predetermined concerning the teacher’s interpretation of the emotional situations in the classroom involving the child(ren) and themselves, and their co-regulation. This inductive procedure allowed the codes and developed categories to emerge, still being close to the data material (Charmaz, 2006). The interviews got transcribed and coded as units of meaning where common themes emerge and further developed into relevant categories. The analysis of the selected video clips consisted of a careful and thorough review considering the teacher’s and the children’s behaviour and their co-regulation. This part of the analysis is still in progress and therefore, in the following, the presentation of some important preliminary findings from the interviews will be summarized, subject to fuller and more detailed elaborations of the findings in the presentation.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsIn relation to RQ 1, preliminary findings indicate that the way the teachers interpreted the emotional situations in the classroom depended on three different themes: 1) their knowledge of the child(ren), 2) their own thoughts and feelings about the child(ren) and 3) their own thoughts and feelings about themselves.
The knowledge of the children was expressed by the teachers describing the situations in detail involving explanations of why the child(ren) behaved as they did and their assumption of the child(ren)’s emotions and thoughts in the situations. Their own thoughts and feelings regarding the child(ren) included the parts where the teachers expressed their valuation of the child’s behaviour and their emotional state and expressions. Finally, the participant’s recall of their own thoughts and feelings included statements about how they reacted to the situations, how that affected their role as a teacher and the difficult balancing act between paying attention to one child versus the whole class hence their responsibility to ensure and facilitate a good learning environment.
In relation to RQ 2, the teacher’s own interpretations seemed to be linked to their behaviour, thoughts and emotions in the co-regulation process. More specifically, the use of strategies and their assessment of the situation was both affected by their emotions as an overall umbrella. For example, the teacher’s relationship with the child seemed to steer which strategies the teacher used in their approach to the emotional child and their co-regulation.
These preliminary results show the importance of paying attention to how teacher’s interpretations of the situation are affecting their co-regulation and how, for example by appropriate education and professional training, these interpretations can potentially be developed towards a more accurate and constructive understanding of the complexity of children’s emotions and teacher’s own role as co-regulators (Mänty et al., 2022).
ReferencesBernier, A., Carlson, S. M., & Whipple, N. (2010). From external regulation to self-regulation: Early parenting precursors of young children's executive functioning. Child Development, 81(1), 326-339. http://doi.org/0009-3920/2010/8101-0021
Charmaz, K. (2006). Constructing Grounded Theory. A practical guide through qualitative analysis: SAGE.
Denham, S. A., Bassett, h. H., & Zinsser, K. (2012). Early Childhood Teachers as Socializers of Young Children's Emotional Competence. Early Childhood Education Journal, 40, 137-143. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10643-012-0504-2
Erdmann, K. A., & Hertel, S. (2019). Self-regulation and co-regulation in early childhood – development, assessment and supporting factors. Metacognition and Learning, 14, 229-238. http://doi.org/10.10007/s11409-019-09211-w
Frenzel, A., Daniels, L. & Burić, I. (2021) Teacher emotions in the classroom and their implications for students, Educational Psychologist, 56:4, 250-264, http://doi.org/10.1080/00461520.2021.1985501
Guo, Y., Spieker, S. J., & Borelli, J. L. (2021). Emotion Co-Regulation Among Mother-Preschooler Dyads Completing the Strange Situation: Relations to Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms Journal of child and family studies, 30, 699-710. doi:https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-020-01812-3
Kurki, K., Järvenoja, H., Järvelä, S., & Mykkänen, A. (2016). How teachers co-regulate children’s emotions and behaviour in socio-emotionally challenging situations in day-care settings. . International Journal of Educational Research, 76, 76-88. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijer.2016.02.002
Kurki, K., Järvenoja, H., Järvelä, S., and Mykkänen, A. (2017). Young children’s use of emotion and behaviour regulation strategies in socio-emotionally challenging day-care situations. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 41, 50–62. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2017.06.002
Lavelli, M., Carra, C., Rossi, G., & Keller, H. (2019). Culture-spcific development of early mother-infant emotional co-regulation: Italian, Cameroonian, and West African immigrant dyads. Developmental Psychology, 55(9), 1850-1867. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000696
Lunkenheimer, E., & Lobo, F. M. (2020). Understanding the parent-child coregulation patterns shaping child self-regulation. Developmental Psychology, 56(6), 1121-1134. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dev0000926
Mänty, K., Kinnunen, S., Rinta-Homi, O. & Koivuniemi, M. (2022). Enhancing early childhood educators’ skills in co-regulating children’s emotions: A collaborative learning program. https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2022.865161
Silkenbeumer, J. R., Schiller, E.-M., & Kärtner, J. (2018). Co- and self-regulation of emotions in the preschool setting. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 44, 72-81. http://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecresq.2018.02.014
Spilt, J. L., Bosmans, G., & Verschueren, K. (2021). Teachers as co-regulators of children’s emotions: A descriptive study of teacher-child emotion dialogues in special education. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 112. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ridd.2021.103894
Valiente, C., Swanson, J., DeLay, D., Fraser, A. M., & Parker, J. H. (2020). Emotion-related socialization in the classroom: Considering the roles of teacher, peers, and the classroom context. Developmental Psychology, 56(3), 578-594. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000863
08. Health and Wellbeing Education
Paper
Students’ School-Related Well-Being and Its Relation to Leisure Time Activities
Alli Klapp, Vassilis Sevdalis, Beatrix Algurén
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Presenting Author: Klapp, Alli;
Algurén, Beatrix
Worldwide, the prevalence of issues compromising well-being and mental health among children and adolescents has grown significantly during the last decades. Results of the most recent 2017/18 study on school children’s health and health habits with 45 countries participating showed that in Sweden, children at an age of 11 years indicate lower life satisfaction compared with children in other European countries, but even at 13 and 15 years of age, the satisfaction of Swedish children is below average (Inchley et al., 2020). Saarni (1999) considered emotional competencies as a set of skills which can mitigate the negative effect of school-related stress that students report. Emotional and social skills have been associated with positive youth development in school, by promoting healthy lifestyle behaviours, and reducing the likelihood of depression, anxiety, conduct disorders, violence, bullying, conflict, and anger (Sancassiani et al. 2015).
Another area of importance for students´ well-being is leisure time activities. The importance of leisure for students’ well-being was evident in a study by Ratelle et al. (Ratelle et al., 2005), where it was shown that a conflict between school and leisure activities was associated with poorer academic outcomes (e.g., poor concentration at school, academic hopelessness, few intentions to pursue studies), which were further associated with higher levels of depression and low life satisfaction. Pointing in a similar direction, other research has shown that a higher time of engaging in screen-based sedentary behaviour was associated with more inattention problems, as well as with less psychological well-being, perceived quality of life, and self-esteem (Hoare et al., 2016).
In recent reviews and meta-analyses, both leisure-time physical activity and school sport were shown to have an inverse association with mental ill-health in children and adolescents; in other words, higher physical activity levels are commonly associated with lower mental health challenges (Biddle et al. 2019; Rodriguez-Ayllon et al., 2019). Focusing solely on the school environment, school-related physical activity interventions were shown to reduce anxiety, increase resilience, and improve well-being children and adolescents (Andermo et al., 2020).
Pollard and Lee (2003) attempted to remedy the inconsistency around the dimensionality of well-being in their systematic literature review. According to their compilation of the literature, general child well-being comprises five main dimensions: the psychological, cognitive, social, economic, and physical dimensions. In the present study, we focus on the psychological, cognitive, and social well-being dimensions of well-being.
In accordance with Pollard and Lee (2003), the psychological well-being dimension should be related to children’s emotions and mental health, comprising levels of anxiety, distress, nervousness, stress, and self-esteem about school. Cognitive well-being is related to individuals’ perception of their capability to function in an intellectual context. Social well-being refers to having supportive and well-functioning social relationships: Individuals who feel that they can develop and maintain satisfying and healthy relationships with surrounding people tend to have high social well-being, while individuals who feel the opposite are more likely to experience social isolation (Pollard & Lee, 2003).
Purposes
The main aim of the present study is to examine the long-term changes in students´ well-being and the impact of leisure time activities on students´ well-being. Specific research questions:
How has students’ well-being changed over time in different education- and feedback systems over the last five decades?
How has students´ well-being changed over time regarding different subgroups, e.g., cognitive ability, gender, socioeconomic status, and leisure time activities?
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedData from the Evaluation Through Follow-up (UGU) longitudinal infrastructure is used. The UGU database contain 10% national representative samples of students in 11 birth cohorts, born between 1948 to 2010. For all cohorts, questionnaires, cognitive tests, administrative and register information is gathered from 3rd Grade (age 10) to the end of upper secondary school (age 19). We will use data from UGU cohorts born in 1967, 1972, 1977, 1982, 1987, 1992, 1998 and 2004 (6th, 9th, and 12th grades).
In the current study, the focus is on analysing long-term changes of students´ well-being and its relations to leisure time activities, by examining trends over time. Univariate statistics will be conducted and multi-group CFA to test measurement variance for all the items included in the constructs. However, these factors and constructs are overlapping to different degrees and these analyses are important to establish discriminant factors. Examples of questionnaire items to be used for creating factors reflecting well-being are “I worry about things that happen in school”, “I find it difficult to concentrate in school”, “I have friends I can be with in school”, and items for creating two factors reflecting leisure time activities are “I listen to music”; “I do sports and exercise”; and “I play digital games” (mean of hours per week).
Then, longitudinal trend analyses will be conducted including covariates in terms of student background characteristics such as cognitive ability, gender, and socioeconomic status. Interactions between the variables will be analyzed and significant interactions will be included in the in-depth trend analyses.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsThe analyses are ongoing. In preliminary analyses comparing students from the two birth cohorts born 1998 and 2004 statistically significant cohort and gender differences were found, where cohort 2004 was disadvantaged in all three well-being dimensions, and girls were disadvantaged in psychological and social well-being. Possible causes of the decrease in well-being may be changes in the educational system, where the later cohort (2004) has experienced a stronger focus on results, grades, and higher eligibility requirements are required for proceeding to the next level in the educational system, compared to earlier cohorts. However, over the last five decades, several changes have made to the educational system, thus a long-term perspective will provide a more thorough picture of the trends in students´ school-related well-being and its relation to leisure time activities.
ReferencesAndermo S, Hallgren M, Nguyen TT, Jonsson S, Petersen S, Friberg M, et al. (2020). School-related physical activity interventions and mental health among children: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Sports Med Open. 6(1).
Biddle SJH, Ciaccioni S, Thomas G, Vergeer I. (2019). Physical activity and mental health in children and adolescents: An updated review of reviews and an analysis of causality. Psychology of Sport and Exercise. 42, 146-55.
Hoare E, Milton K, Foster C, Allender S. (2016). The associations between sedentary behaviour and mental health among adolescents: a systematic review. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity. 13.
Inchley, J., Currie, D., Budisavljevic, S., Torsheim, T., J stad, A., Cosma, A., Kelly, C., Arnarsson, M., & Samdal, O. (2020). Spotlight on adolescent health and well-being. Findings from the 2017/2018 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) survey in Europe and Canada. International report. World Health Organization. Regional Office for Europe.
Malecki K, Elliott SN. (2002). Children's social behaviors as predictors of academic achievement: A longitudinal analysis. School Psychology Quarterly. 17(1), 1-23.
Pollard EL, Lee PD. (2003). Child well-being: A systematic review of the literature. Social Indicators Research. 61(1), 59-78.
Ratelle CF, Vallerand RJ, Senecal C, Provencher P. (2005). The relationship between school-leisure conflict and educational and mental health indexes: A motivational analysis. Journal of Applied Social Psychology. 35(9), 1800-23.
Rodriguez-Ayllon M, Cadenas-Sanchez C, Estevez-Lopez F, Munoz NE, Mora-Gonzalez J, Migueles JH, et al. (2019). Role of Physical Activity and Sedentary Behavior in the Mental Health of Preschoolers, Children and Adolescents: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sports Medicine. 49(9), 1383-410.
Sancassiani F, Pintus E, Holte A, Paulus P, Moro MF, Cossu G, et al. (2015). Enhancing the Emotional and Social Skills of the Youth to Promote their Wellbeing and Positive Development: A Systematic Review of Universal School-based Randomized Controlled Trials. Clin Pract Epidemiol Ment Health. 11(Suppl 1 M2), 21-40.
08. Health and Wellbeing Education
Paper
Environmental Sensitivity and the Promotion of Well-being in the Classroom
Sara Benini1, Marina Pettignano1, Luciana Castelli1, Luca Sciaroni1, Francesca Lionetti2, Michael Pluess3
1SUPSI, Switzerland; 2Università G. D’Annunzio di Chieti Pescara; 3Queen Mary University of London
Presenting Author: Benini, Sara;
Pettignano, Marina
According to the theory of Environmental Sensitivity, individuals differ in the way they respond to environmental stimuli, due to differences in the depth of information processing (Pluess et al., 2015). The trait of sensitivity is normally distributed in the population (Pluess et al., 2020), and it is possible to identify three groups, according to different levels of environmental sensitivity (low, 30%, medium, 40% and high sensitivity, 30%) (Lionetti et al., 2018). Highly sensitive people have a deeper experience of the environment, are more affected by their experiences and are more susceptible to environmental influences, whether negative or positive (Belsky & Pluess, 2009; Pluess et al., 2020). Even at school, highly sensitive children differ in the extent to which the school environment impacts on their quality of life, well-being and learning outcomes and, according to the Vantage Sensitivity model (Pluess & Belsky, 2013), highly sensitive people show a greater response to positive experiences, including those occurring within the school environment (Pluess & Boniwell, 2015). The present study aims at investigating whether a teacher-training intervention for enhancing the quality of classroom interactions in the domains of emotional support, classroom organization and instructional support (Pianta et al., 2008) might be more effective for highly sensitive children’s wellbeing than for low sensitive children. Based on the vantage sensitivity model, the hypothesis is that highly sensitive children, would show a significantly higher increase in well-being scores after the intervention, compared to low sensitive children. The outcomes of interest are: identity safety, emotional support, optimism and self-esteem. The role of teachers’ sensitivity, self-efficacy, job and life satisfaction are also investigated.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedParticipants are 251 children (51.4 % girls) from 15 second-grade classes in the Italian-speaking region of Switzerland, and 15 teachers of the same classes. Ten classes are assigned to the experimental group (n=174 pupils) and five to the control group (n=77 pupils). Only the classes in the experimental group are subjected to the intervention. Children’s data are collected using a self-report questionnaire that is administered with the guidance of the researcher at two time-points (November 2022 and May 2023). Teachers are also asked to complete a self-report questionnaire twice. The children’s questionnaire includes the following measures: the Highly sensitive Child scale (Pluess et al., 2018, Italian validation by Nocentini et al. 2018); the Lack of identity safety scale (Haidari & Karakus, 2019, adapted and translated into Italian by the authors); the optimism and self-concept sub-scales of the Middle Years Development instrument questionnaire (Schonert-Reichl et al., 2013; Italian validation by Castelli et al., 2017). The teachers’ questionnaire includes the Italian versions of the teacher self-efficacy scale (Moè et al., 2010), the Highly Sensitive Person Scale (Brief Version, HSP-12) (Pluess et al., 2020), the job satisfaction scale (Moè et al., 2010) and the life satisfaction scale (Diener et al., 1985; Italian validation by di Fabio & Palazzeschi, 2012). Multivariate analyses are used to investigate how the children’s variables are related; in particular, how environmental sensitivity is related to well-being. Furthermore, using comparative analyses, differences between the pupils’ outcomes between the experimental and control group and highly and low sensitive children are explored.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsWe expect to observe a significant increase in the well-being of pupils in the experimental group in the data collected after the intervention compared with the data collected before the intervention. In addition, based on the Vantage sensitivity model, we expect the highly sensitive children to show a significantly higher increase in their well-being than low sensitive children in the experimental group.
ReferencesBelsky, J., & Pluess, M. (2009). Beyond Diathesis Stress : Differential Susceptibility to Environmental Influences. 135(6), 885–908. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017376
Castelli, L., Marcionetti, J., Crescentini, A., & Sciaroni, L. (2017). Monitoring Preadolescents’ Well-being: Italian Validation of the Middle Years Development Instrument. Child Indicators Research, 11, 609–628. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-017-9459-6
di Fabio, A., & Palazzeschi, L. (2012). The Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS): Un contributo alla validazione italiana con lavoratori adulti. Counseling: Giornale Italiano di Ricerca e Applicazioni, 5(2), 207–215.
Diener, E., Emmons, R. A., Larsen, R. J., & Griffin, S. (1985). The Satisfaction With Life Scale. Journal of Personality Assessment, 49(1), 71–75. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327752jpa4901_13
Haidari, S. M., & Karakus, F. (2019). Safe learning environment perception scale (SLEPS): A validity and reliability study. International journal of assessment tools in Education, 6(3), 444-460. https://doi.org/10.21449/ijate.550393
Moè, A., Pazzaglia, F., & Friso, G. (2010). MESI. Motivazioni, Emozioni, Strategie e Insegnamento. Questionari metacognitivi per insegnanti. Erickson.
Nocentini, A., Menesini, E., & Pluess, M. (2018). The personality trait of environmental sensitivity predicts children’s positive response to school-based antibullying intervention. Clinical Psychological Science, 6(6), 848–859. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702618782194
Pianta, R. C., LaParo, K., & Hamre, B. K. (2008). Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS). Brookes.
Pluess, M., Lionetti, F., Aron, E. N., & Aron, A. (2020, August 19). People Differ in their Sensitivity to the Environment: An Integrated Theory and Empirical Evidence. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/w53yc
Pluess, M. (2015). Individual Differences in Environmental Sensitivity. Child Development Perspectives, 9(3), 138–143. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdep.12120
Pluess, M., Assary, E., Lionetti, F., Lester, K. J., Krapohl, E., Aron, E. N., & Aron, A. (2018, Jan). Environmental sensitivity in children: Development of the Highly Sensitive Child Scale and identification of sensitivity groups. Developmental Psychology, 54(1), 51-70. https://doi.org/10.1037/dev0000406
Schonert-Reichl, K. A., Guhn, M., Gadermann, A. M., Hymel, S., Sweiss, L., & Hertzman, C. (2013). Development and validation of the Middle Years Development Instrument (MDI): Assessing children’s well-being and assets across multiple contexts. Social Indicators Research, 114(2), 345–369. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-012-0149-y
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