Emotion Talk in Preschool Teachers and Children Displaying Elevated Externalizing Behaviors: Child- and Teacher-Level Predictors

• In Event: Emotional Competence from Infancy to Late Childhood

Abstract

Parental emotion talk is a key socialization mechanism within the family context (e.g., Dunn, et al., 1991). As children spend increasing amounts of time in preschool programs (Burchinal, et al., 2015), teachers’ emotion talk may also serve to support children’s socioemotional development (Denham et al., 2012), and may be particularly beneficial for children who display externalizing behaviors (Salmon et al., 2016). Indeed, a recent study (Alamos et al., 2020) linked teacher-child emotion talk frequency to gains in children’s positive engagement with the teacher in a sample of preschoolers displaying elevated externalizing behaviors. Yet, there remain key questions about how child and teacher characteristics play out in relation to emotion talk. Specifically, the link between child characteristics (e.g., demographics, temperament, language) and teacher-child emotion talk frequency is unclear, as is our understanding of how teacher characteristics (e.g., demographics, beliefs, observed practice) explain the frequency of teacher-child emotion conversations. Although child and teacher characteristics are theorized to influence emotion-related classroom interactions (Valiente et al., 2020), empirical evidence is warranted. This study adresses this gap in the literature by investigating child and teacher characteristics that explain teacher-child emotion talk frequency in a sample of preschoolers perceived by their teachers to display elevated externalizing behaviors.

Data for this study come from an efficacy trial of a dyadic teacher-child relationship intervention. Participants included 183 preschool teachers (53% White; 41% Black; 6% Other) and 470 children (38% White; 42% Black; 20% Other) rated by their tachers as displaying externalizing behaviors. Teachers’ emotion talk was observed during a dyadic structured storybook reading task and coded for frequency using a coding scheme adapted from parenting studies that used similar book reading tasks. Parents reported on child demographic characteristics, teachers reported on children’s temperament, and language skills were directly assessed using the PPV-T (Dunn et al., 2007). Regarding teacher characteristics, demographics and authoritarian beliefs were collected via survey and teacher’s practice was observed using the CLASS (Pianta et al., 2008).

We estimated a multilevel model to examine emotion talk frequency as a function of child (level-1) and teacher (level-2) characteristics. The ICC for emotion talk frequency indicated that 45% of the variation was due to differences between teachers. Preliminary results showed that teachers holding an early childhood major talk about emotions with children more frequently (b = .16, p = .03). Conversely, teachers who report authoritarian beliefs were less likely to talk with children about emotions (b = -.14, p = .04). None of the child characteristics tested (i.e., language skills, effortful control, and externalizing behaviors) were significantly associated with teacher-child emotion talk frequency at the p < .05 level. Final models will incorporate child and teacher demographic characteristics.

Findings from this study help us understand what factors allow for more or less frequent emotion talk (e.g., teacher’s early childhood major or authoritarian beliefs, respectively). This knowledge has implications to promote more frequent emotion talk within teacher-child interactions to ultimately support the social and emotional development of preschoolers perceived by their teachers to exhibit elevated externalizing behaviors.

Authors

• Pilar Alamos, University of Virginia - Charlottesville
  Presenting Author

• Amanda P Williford, University of Virginia - Charlottesville
  Non-Presenting Author