The role of emotions in the classroom of childhood education

Abstract

This research focuses on the importance that a group of 98 nursery school teachers from the island of Tenerife give to the work of emotions with their students. A questionnaire of 10 items was prepared to get their feedback. The target was getting information about: the importance teachers give to emotions, their training in emotional education, their opinions about the support they find in the official curriculum, and the strategies they use in the classroom to manage emotions. The results show that, although most of them seem to give importance to work with emotions in their classrooms, they usually have low training levels in emotional education, and they find few resources to carry it out. In general terms, they consider that official curriculum does not provide them with enough tools for daily practice. They turn to some strategies to help students to manage emotions (identifying and expressing feelings, dramatization, self-regulation), classroom conflicts resolution, Identification and expression of emotions, problem solving, favoring empathy, and self-regulation) and managing the conflicts themselves as teachers (self-regulation, reflecting and seeking solutions).