Emotional State Talk during Shared Book Reading in Early Childhood Classrooms: Teacher-Child Contingent Responses

• In Event: Poster Session 05
  In Poster Session: PS 05 Topic - Education, Schooling

Abstract

The ability to understand the nature and causes of emotions, to identify or predict emotions, and to understand rules for socially appropriate emotion expression can be developed in school contexts, particularly, during reading activities. This study investigated emotional state talk between teachers and their students in 81 early childhood classrooms during shared book reading. Transcriptions of reading sessions in which teachers shared with their students an experimental emotion narrative book were submitted to content analysis. Teachers’ and children’s utterances were coded for their form (question vs. comment), and content: (a) emotion identification: utterances referring to the identification of the emotion which the character, the teacher, the children or others were feeling or felt; (b) emotion causality: utterances referring to the relation between events that elicit emotions and the emotions themselves or their behavioral expressions; (c) emotion inference: utterance referring to the consequences of emotions to self and others, to moral and social judgements or even to predictions of future events based on the emotions felt by the characters; and (d) non-emotional content: utterance referring to any type of content that was not emotional in its nature. We used sequential analysis to evaluate contingent relations between teachers’ and children’s utterances. Unfortunately, due to low frequencies of two initial codes, children’s questions were dismissed, and content codes “emotion causality” and “emotion inference” were recoded within one larger causality/inference code (for teachers and children). All the sequential analysis tests were run in GSEQ using lag 1 transitions and pooled sessions. We used joint frequencies, adjusted residuals with the associated p-values, and odds ratios as a measure of the effect size of significant associations. Table 1 presents the results of the first part of the sequential analysis, in which we examined children’s contingent comments to teachers’ questions and comments about emotions. Children were highly specific and responsive to teachers’ emotional state talk. For example, teachers’ questions about emotion identification and emotion causality/inference were contingently followed by children’s comments about the same topic (z = 51.80; p < .01; OR = 181.23 and (z = 52.67; p < .01; OR = 243.56, respectively), whereas questions about emotion causality/inference tended to inhibit children’s comments about emotion identification (z = -3.04; p < .01; OR = .20). Table 2 shows the results of the second part of the sequential analysis, in which we verified teachers’ contingent questions and comments to children’s comments about emotions. Results revealed that children’s comments on emotion identification evoked further questions from the teachers about the same topic (z = 20.14; p < .01; OR = 17.95) and about emotion causality/inference (z = 3.83; p < .01; OR = 2.79). Children’s comments about emotion identification also evoked comments from teachers about the same content (z = 35.12; p < .01; OR = 49.90). Given the value of emotional state talk for children’s emotional development, teachers must be informed of preschoolers’ ability to consistently participate in classroom discussions about emotions, even when complex topics like causality and inferences are addressed.

Authors

• Patricia Alvarenga, Federal University of Bahia
  Presenting Author

• Tricia A Zucker, University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sherine Tambyraja, The Ohio State University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Laura M. Justice, Ohio State University
  Non-Presenting Author