Teachers' emotion socialization of kindergarten children: emotion talk on children's social emotional outcome in Singapore's context

• Main Author: Loy, Hillary Song Ling
• Other Authors: Ho Moon-Ho Ringo
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2023
• Subjects: Social sciences::Psychology
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/168770
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

The first 6 years of a child's development is most critical for social emotional development. Though parents are the first emotion socializers supporting the child, kindergarten teachers play a significant role in emotion socialization as more children are enrolled into kindergarten between the age of 4 and 6. As children spend long hours with their teachers in school, teachers are presented with many opportunities to engage in emotion socialization behaviours. This study aims to examine teachers’ emotion socialization through emotion talk within shared book reading sessions in the context of Singapore. Other factors like teachers’ demographics and child characteristics are also explored as past literature in parental emotion socialization have found moderating effects. A coding scheme drawn from past parental emotion socialization literature was used to code for teachers’ emotion talk, mental state talk and behavioural talk during a shared book reading session. Children's social emotional outcomes were reported by the teachers through the administration of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Preliminary analysis involved descriptive analysis and correlations between teachers’ demographics, children's characteristics and the teachers’ emotion talk which were followed by linear models. Results suggested coherence with past parental literature in the local context of Singapore where unique observations were observed. Results from this study can be used to inform future support for teachers as emotion socializers. Future studies may look at other aspects of emotion socialization such as teachers’ contingent responses or emotional expressivity.