Abstract
Children show dramatic social and emotional development during the preschool years. One important element of this development is emotional competence. Emotional competence involves two components: emotion regulation and emotion knowledge. Emotional competence is important because children with better emotional competence have better social and academic outcomes. Preschool teachers typically receive little training on promoting children’s emotional competence.
To address early childhood teachers' need for more training in promoting children's emotional competence, the researcher developed and conducted a two-hour online workshop to support early childhood educators in teaching emotional competence skills, focusing on co-regulation and emotion coaching. The workshop included a PowerPoint presentation based on an extensive literature review and recommendations for educators to gain further information on the concepts covered in the workshop. Preschool teachers from three private schools in Sacramento participated in the workshop, which was held via Zoom to accommodate professional development needs. The session covered emotional competence, emotion coaching, and practical strategies for classroom implementation. Participants provided feedback through a survey assessing the workshop’s effectiveness and areas for improvement.
The evaluation of this workshop highlights its overall effectiveness in introducing preschool teachers to emotion coaching and co-regulation strategies. Despite some limitations, such as the timing, online format, and lack of interactive elements like role-playing and video examples, the feedback suggests that participants found the content useful, clear, and applicable to their practice. The strong likelihood of participants integrating these strategies into their teaching reinforces the workshop's value in addressing a critical need within early childhood education.