Preschool Teachers’ Use of Strategies to Support Social-Emotional Competence in Young Children

Abstract

Healthy development of social-emotional competence in early childhood years creates a strong foundation for future academic success and social-emotional well-being. The purpose of this descriptive study was to investigate preschool teachers' use of strategies to support young children's social-emotional competence. A total of 103 teachers and classrooms participated in the study. Descriptive findings of the study indicated that preschool teachers implemented a few practices to promote social-emotional competence in young children in the absence of training and professional development support. Preschool teachers were observed to implement universal promotion practices more often than tertiary preventions practices. Preschool teachers' overall use of strategies to enhance the social-emotional competence of young children did not differ significantly across classroom types and levels and based on whether teachers received training on promoting social-emotional development and addressing challenging behaviors. While there was a positive correlation between the level of preschool teachers' use of social-emotional teaching strategies and the number of adults in the classrooms, a negative correlation was observed between preschool teachers' use of strategies and the number of children in the classrooms. Implications of the findings for future research and practice are discussed.

Pre-Schoolers’ Parental Concern on Educational Effect of Information and Communication Technology on Children’s Learning

“…Interaction takes place with one another through the internet or cell-phones. ICT advancement has arrived and is improving (Rakap, Balikci, Kalkan, & Aydin, 2018) lifestyle. Therefore, policymakers, schools and parents should have future foresight plans as that ICT has climacteric purpose (Dudney, 2010;Ghavifekr & Rosdy, 2015).…”

How Teachers Solve Students’ Conflicts with Emotional Regulation Strategies

“…Children are lack of self-regulation, so sometimes they would express their emotions in some extremely negative ways or have emotion dysregulation. Research indicates that students, who tend to have negative emotional expressiveness, have significant problems getting along with their peers [8]. It is also a negative predictor for an academic barrier, which is the lower academic performance at school.…”

Türkiye’de Okul Öncesi Eğitimde Kaynaştırma: Neredeydik? Neredeyiz? Nerede Olmalıyız?

“…Studies focused on social skills in inclusive preschool settings examined impact of specific programs designed to improve social skills of children with special needs, compared social skills and problem behaviors of children with special needs and those with typical development, and investigated teachers' use of practices to support social-emotional development and address problem-behaviors of children with special needs. These set of studies has shown that intervention program were effective in increasing social skills of children with special needs; comparison to their typically developing peers, children with special needs placed in inclusive settings possessed higher levels of problem behaviors and lower levels of social skills; and preschool teachers rarely used strategies to support social-emotional development and address problem behaviors of these children (Aykır and Çiftçi-Tekinarslan, 2012;Duman and Koçak, 2013;Metin et al, 2015;Rakap et al, 2018).…”