In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the research examining children’s development in various aspects through each stages of life. Research has showed that preschool experiences play a significant role in children’s years of growing as it pathed way for cognitive development, language developing, learning motivation and social and emotional competence (Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Vasta, Miller, & Ellis, 2004; Murray, Murray, 7 Waas, 2008). Teachers thus taking on a critical role as one of the main attachment figures for young children, navigating them through the various experiences as they are the ones who spent many hours with the children. According to Denham and Burton (2003), preschool teachers can exert strong socialisation influences on young children thus formally or informally affect their development. In a gist , it means that a child’s relationship with his or her first teacher is a powerful predictor of his or her level of social competence and success in the school years. Therefore it is important that the teacher creates an environment that supports discovery of self, guide behaviours and development of appropriate social and emotional competence. As teachers play an increasingly important role in young children’s early stages of development specifically in their social and emotional competence, this paper will focus on three factors that influence the individual variation in the level of social and emotional competence in each child These identified vital factors are emotion and self regulations, teacher-child relationship and classroom climate.
Emotion Competence and Self Regulation
The ability to self regulate would mean that the child has gained a powerful tool to succeed in both academic and socio-emotional domains within a classroom setting. A possible reason behind would be that the child is able to effectively communicate his / her feelings and voice concerns , which are successfully addressed by an adult or peer. This possibility could be supported by Pickens (2009) who described social emotional development as where children learn to self regulate, display empathy, effectively communicate their feelings, exhibit positive social interactions and have social independence. Similarly Calkins and Williford (2009) as defined self regulation to be an individual’s capacity to manage his / her behaviours and emotions appropriately in a given context. Based on these definitions, self regulation involves the ability to inhibit behaviours; and use two forms of widely labelled as “executive functions” and “effortful control”. According to Calkins and Marcovitch (2010), executive functions is a set of cognitive skills specialised in problem solving and goal directed behaviours such as inhibitory control and attention. Effortful control as defined by Rothbart and Bate (2006) is the "efficiency of executive attention, the ability to inhibit a dominant response, to activate a subdominant response, to plan and detect errors”. Research exploring on the concept of self regulation have showed consistent evidences that those who perform better academically, more engaged and developed positive relationships with teachers and peers were children reported with high levels of self regulation (Calkins & Willford, 2009; Eisenberg, Valiente, & Eggum, 2010; Valiente, Lemery-Chalfant, Swanson & Reiser, 2008). Likewise, research (Blair, 2002; Calkins & Williford, 2009; Eisenberg et al., 2010) have also demonstrated low levels of self regulation effect children in their experiences and faced more difficulties in terms of academic tasks, peer relations, and school adjustment.
When children address their concerns, they experienced a wave of emotions resulted from either their internal or external environment as they learn to develop self regulation. Emotions whether positive or negative do serve as an important regulatory functions for the children. Although experiencing emotions is a vital part of development, it is important for young children to learn appropriate ways to manage their emotions. Appropriate ways include actions that steer away from self inflicted harm, harming others, objects and ways that does not hinder other important activities. According to Eisenberg et al (2010), they have found that emotional competence do play an important role in school success and adjustment in the preschool classroom and there is a marked increase in emotional regulation between 3 and 5 years and continues through (Cole, Armstrong & Pemberton, 2010; Zelazo & Boseovski, 2001). Through this lens, it highlights the importance of the preschool classroom as a facilitator to guide children through their development of these competencies.
Classroom Climate
Preschool classroom is deem as being a facilitator for emotional development as children faced a multitude of rapid changing emotionally arousing situations. These situations become opportunity for children to learn appropriate ways to manage emotional reactions and behaviours as they imitated their teachers and peers (Raver, Garner & Smith-Donald, 2007). Also, the classroom provides a safe environment for children to practice their newly acquired regulation skills. For these to happen, the classroom atmosphere should be emotionally supportive where there are high levels of warmth and responsiveness of either verbal or non verbal, low levels of negativity, age appropriate routines and predictable behaviour management approaches. As defined by Amett (1989), classroom emotional refers to the sensitivity and responsiveness of verbal and non verbal behaviours, communications and exchanges between teachers and children in their classroom. Research have shown that children in supportive environment had better social competence and fewer behaviours issues (Burchinal, Howes, Painta & Mashburn, 2010; Jeon, Langill, Peterson, Luze, Carta & Atwater, 2010) and it dull the negative behaviours ( Palermo, Hanish, Martin, Fabes & Reiser, 2007). All these can be better understand through the construct known as classroom climate, which is used in examining the quality of classroom interactions. There are many dimensions when looking at classroom climate however this paper will only be looking at the three most widely focused in research:
Quality of instruction usually refers to the strategies that teacher used in supporting children’s learning and conceptual development.Behaviour management or classroom organization refers to the non instructional methods adopted to maximise learning opportunities by ensuring predictable behaviour management, engaging environment and redirecting children’s misbehaviours. Lastly, emotional climate talks about the tone set during interactions between the teachers and children and the ability of the teachers to provide comfort, reassurance and autonomy at the same time. This is important as it is the teachers’ sensitive attunement to children’s affective and emotional state allows both parties to engage in mutually shared experiences.
Teacher-Child Relationship
In the process that guide development, relationship building is the most fundamental part of the process, and thus this aspect forms the core of an meaningful early childhood education programs. While classroom climate concentrated on the interactions or relationship between teachers and all students in the classroom, teacher child relationship differs as it focused on the interactions between teacher and individual children. Lippard, Paro, Rouse and Crosby (2018) defined teacher-child relationships as the cumulative and ongoing interpersonal connections between individual children and teacher, consisting of three concepts, interactions, expectations and affective quality. Teacher- child relationships has been characterised into teacher-child closeness and teacher – child conflict. Mashbum and Pianta (2006) defined closeness as the degree of “positive interactions, open communication, and warm feelings between both the children and teachers” while conflict is defined as the degree of “negative interactions and negative affect” between the parties. Research examining both components of teacher- child relationships have found an indispensable findings to a extensive wide range of child outcomes. Warm and positive relationships encouraged better school adjustment (Baker, Grant & Morlock, 2008), serves as an influential social source on children’s social and academic skills development (Baker, 2006; Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Valiente,Lemery-Chalfant, et. al, 2008), higher social relationship (Ladd & Burgess, 2001). Children in conflict relationships on the other hand have found to exhibit more problematic behaviours and lower social competence (Pianta & Stuhlman, 2004; O’Connor, Dearing, & Collins, 2011). These findings are similar to findings of children in secure attachment relationship, where positive teacher child relationship provides children with opportunities to explore and benefit from these opportunities. Likewise, overly reliant children and those who not trust teachers may miss these opportunities that help them develop necessary skills. As earlier mentioned, the relationship between the teacher and child has also showed links toward self regulation behaviours. Academic achievement and social emotional development are not the only evidences on the importance of positive teacher child relationship. Other established evidences include motivation for learning, learning process and teacher’s attitudes and expectation towards way student’s are being assessed. All of these studies have proven that a teacher who is deemed as having positive attitudes and behaviors aids children better in the development and learning. Current study choose to investigate the quality of teacher child relationship on the impact of social emotional development.
Attachment Theory
A variety of theories have been used as the foundation, in the extensive study of examining teacher – child relationships. One such theory is the attachment theory (Bowlby, 1969/1982; Aisnworth, Blehar, Waters & Wall, 1978). Theory of attachment originated from Bowlby (1982) have been widely used as a framework for a vast number of researchers investigating on the issue of teacher – child relationships (Hamre & Pianta, 2001; Davis, 2003; Buyse, Verschueren & Doumen, 2010). Prior literatures have proven that children’s socioemotional well being is crucial to school success, attachment lay the foundation for such well being. Four types of attachment (Ainsworth, 1978) identified: (1) Secure attachment. The attachment figure’s (AF) sensitivity encouraged the child explore freely and to seek them for help when distress. AFs’ open communication, warm statements, less control and looking at things in the child’s perspective are also factors that promote a secure attachment. (2) Avoidant attachment. AFs in this attachment tend to be insensitive, angry and rejecting resulting in them to be unavailable in times of children’s emotional turmoil; thus explaining why such children avoid becoming emotionally close with their AFs and turn away from them. (3) Resistant attachment. Children with this attachment fail to receive feelings of security from their AFs. These children are not allow to freely direct their play and usually displayed exaggerated emotions which are difficult to soothe and clingy, which reflected the inconsistent and inadequately responsive caregiving of their AFs. Last but not least (4) disorganised -disoriented attachment. Children with this attachment appeared apprehensive and their stress behaviours may intensify when they approach their AFs.. AFs’ behaviours in such relationship are deemed as incomprehensible or even frightening, especially when they approach child in aggressive manner, trance like behaviours and showing fearful facial expressions. These behaviours of AF placed children in a conflicting situations as they secure based adult they are drawn to is at the same time frightening.
Decades of research have shown that security of attachment is linked to remarkable array of child outcomes over long periods of time
Attachment in a classroom according to Bergin and Bergin (2009) serves two functions: (1) provides feeling of security to allow children to freely exploration, which brings about balance with children’s innate motivation to explore their environment, (2) helps form the basis for socialising children where children adopt the adults’ behaviour and values as they interacted. These two functions led to an understanding that attachment is important throughout the stages of life where the attachment figure’s availability remains important but what differs is the physical proximity; which distinctively differentiate attachment with dependency.
In order for these functions of attachment to take place, attachment bonds need to be develop. For that to happen, Howes (1999) has stated the need for three criteria to be met: (1) provision of physical and emotional care; (2) continuity or consistency; and (3) emotional investment in the relationship. These are similar to the attachment studies of parent child relationships and thus could be use as a frame to understand the nature and role of teacher – child relationships. In line with the framework, a relationship with trust, openness, responsiveness and supportiveness encourages children’s learning opportunities provided in the classroom environment; which defined a secure teacher- child relationship. On the flip side, highly dependent or conflictual teacher child relationships are thought to interfere with learning, as of avoidant and resistant attachment styles (Birch & Ladd, 1997). The quality of teacher-child relationships similarly affect children’s social competence and behaviours. Empirical studies have established those in secure teacher-child relationship played with peers in more complex ways and lower risk for maladaptive behaviours; while resistant and avoidant children either faced more difficulties with peers or hesitant to engage with peers and faced higher risk of maladaptive behaviours (Buyse, Verschueren & Doumen, 2010; Howes & Ritchie, 1999).
Current Study
Depending on the context and direction of self regulation of the research, there are variation in the definitions of emotional and social competence. In this current study, social and emotional competence will be adapted and conceptualised as “ones’ ability to understand, manage and express the social and emotional aspects, and thus enabling oneself to form relationships and solve everyday problems”.