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Poster #208 - Exploring the relations between positive parenting, positive teacher engagement, and emotion regulation in low-income preschoolers

Sat, March 23, 8:00 to 9:15am, Baltimore Convention Center, Floor: Level 1, Exhibit Hall B

Integrative Statement

Emotion regulation, the ability to adaptively respond to an experience with the appropriate range of emotions, is associated with the positive development of many skills important for children’s later life success, including academic and social outcomes (Herndon et al., 2013). While research has found that preschoolers demonstrate greater emotion regulation capacity when they experience more positive parenting (Eisenberg et al., 1999) and when they are more positively engaged with their teachers (Pianta et al., 1997), few studies have examined whether positive parenting moderates the relationship between teacher engagement and emotion regulation (Figure 1). For example, children with less positive parenting may especially benefit from positive teacher engagement, since the teacher may be the first adult to provide nurturing, responsive care to the child. In contrast, children with high levels of positive parenting may already be getting these responsive interactions at home and comparatively may benefit less from interaction with another adult.
To explore these hypotheses, we analyzed data collected as part of a larger study that followed children’s outcomes throughout preschool and kindergarten. Participants were 380, primarily low-income preschoolers from southeastern United States. Assessments occurred in the fall, winter and spring of the preschool year (Times 1-3, respectively; see Table 1).
Positive teacher engagement was assessed at Times 1, 2, and 3 through a classroom observational tool (inCLASS; Downer et al., 2012). Positive parenting was assessed at Time 1 using the Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (Clerkin et al., 2007). Emotion regulation was assessed at Time 3 using the teacher-reported Emotion Regulation Checklist (Shields & Cichetti, 1997).
We conducted regression analyses to examine the extent to which positive parenting moderated the relationship between teacher engagement and emotion regulation. Our analyses controlled for baseline (Time 1) emotion regulation, child age, and maternal years of education.
Results showed a significant negative association between positive teacher engagement and child emotion regulation. We did not find significant evidence that parenting moderated the relationship between teacher engagement and emotion regulation.
This negative association between teacher engagement and emotion regulation suggests that children with greater average levels of positive teacher engagement during the preschool year are rated as less emotionally regulated by their teacher. This result was surprising: it could be that children with lower levels of emotion regulation were making greater efforts to engage with their teacher, or that teachers were engaging in more frequent and higher quality interactions with children who often need their support. Alternatively, teachers may be viewing children who consistently seek support as being less emotionally regulated.
Our results are a first attempt at understanding how parenting relates to teacher engagement and emotion regulation, yet future research might benefit from the use of multiple measures (reports of children, and direct observations) to offer a more holistic perspective. Indeed, teachers’ reports offer valuable insights in measuring children’s skills in the context of classrooms and their development, yet they may be subject to rater bias (Doromal et al., 2017). This presentation will make recommendations for future directions and offer implications of our results for practitioners.

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