Poster #181 - Emotional Competence, Responsiveness, and Social-emotional Learning Beliefs: Impact on Child-Caregiver Relationships

• In Event: 3-003 - Poster Session 09
  In Poster Session: PS 09 Section - School Readiness/Childcare

Integrative Statement

Approximately 13 million children spend all or a significant portion of their weekdays in non-parental childcare (Laughlin, 2013). Emotional competence permeates all aspects of teaching and childcare and is crucial to the development of positive relationships between children and teachers/childcare workers (Andersen, Evans, & Harvey, 2012). Positive child-teacher relationships are central to young children’s learning and development, and when these relationships are healthy and emotionally supportive, they tend to result in positive developmental outcomes and can be protective for children (Ereky-Stevens et al., 2018; Garner & Waajid, 2008). However, little is known about the emotion-related competencies and skills of childcare workers (Corr et al., 2014). Our goal was to examine the extent to which childcare workers’ emotional responsiveness and comfort with social-emotional teaching practices help explain the relationship between childcare workers’ emotional competence and child-caregiver relationship quality. We examined the associations between early childcare workers’ emotional competence (emotional understanding and emotion regulation), observed responsiveness, comfort with social-emotional teaching practices, and child-caregiver relationship quality. We hypothesized that emotional competence would be positively related to childcare workers’ responsiveness and perceived comfort with social-emotional teaching practices. In addition, we predicted that childcare workers’ responsiveness and comfort with social-emotional teaching practices would be positively related with relational closeness and negatively related with relational conflict. Participants were N=100 early childcare workers (n=72 center-based Early Head Start teachers and n=28 family childcare [FCC] providers). Observations were made using the Adult Involvement Scale (AIS; Howes & Stewart, 1987) to assess caregiver emotional responsiveness. Participants completed questionnaires assessing their emotional competence (Self-Report Emotional Intelligence Scale; Brackett et al., 2006), their beliefs about social-emotional teaching practices (Teachers’ Beliefs about Social Emotional Learning; Brackett et al., 2012), and child-caregiver relationship quality (Student-Teacher Relationship Scale; Pianta, 2001; Whitaker, Dearth-Wesley, & Gooze, 2015). Results: childcare workers’ emotion regulation ability was positively associated with child-caregiver relational closeness. Childcare workers’ understanding and regulation of emotion were both positively associated with their comfort with social-emotional teaching practices. Childcare workers’ observed responsiveness was positively related to child-caregiver relational closeness and negatively related to relational conflict. Findings are consistent with aspects of Jennings and Greenberg’s (2009) Prosocial Classroom model, which asserts that educators high in emotional and social competence tend to adopt childcare practices that result in supportive relationships with children. The present study provides evidence that childcare workers’ emotional understanding and emotion regulation both relate directly to their comfort with social-emotional teaching practices. Additionally, childcare workers’ emotion regulation and emotional responsiveness appear to be uniquely important for child-caregiver relationship quality. This work holds implications for interventions focused on helping childcare workers’ develop effective emotional competence and responsiveness to support positive child-caregiver relationships. These findings provide correlational rather than causal insight into whether childcare workers’ responsiveness to young children and their perceived social-emotional teaching practices provide a pathway between emotional competence and the quality of child-caregiver relationships. Future work will benefit from examination of these associations both longitudinally and bi-directionally, as well as examination of how these processes relate to children’s emotional, behavioral, and educational functioning.

Authors

• Pamela Garner, George Mason University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Julia Madeleine Shadur, George Mason University
  Presenting Author

• Tameka Parker, George Mason University
  Non-Presenting Author