Abstract
The development of emotional competence, which includes the abilities to understand, express, and regulate emotions (Denham, 1998; Denham & Kochanoff, 2002; Izard et al, 2001), is influenced by primary caregivers and adults with whom children have significant interactions on a regular basis. Due to the increasing number of children who spend their days in childcare where their primary caregivers are teachers, research on the development of emotional competence needs to include children and teachers within the childcare setting. The intent of this study was to explore the emotion beliefs of infant/toddler teachers in regards to their demographic information. A further aim of the study was to determine if there was a significant relationship between the emotion beliefs of infant/toddler teachers and the emotional competence of the children in their care. Twenty-one infant/toddler teachers and 38 infants/toddlers were recruited from within two classrooms at a university based childcare center in Northern California. Participating teachers completed a demographic questionnaire as well as Hyson and Lee’s (1996) Caregiver’s Beliefs About Feelings (CBAF) survey about emotion beliefs. Children’s existing scores on the Desired Results Developmental Profile-Revised Infant/Toddler Instrument (Birth to 36 Months) were utilized as the measure to evaluate each of the children’s levels of emotional competence (California Department of Education, 2008). The results of this study found significant correlations between the teachers’ emotion beliefs surrounding their primary care children’s emotional competence, and the actual levels of the infants and toddlers emotional competence. Teachers’ beliefs surrounding their relationships with the children in their care also yielded significant correlations with the children’s language subscale of emotional competence. However, due to the lack of variance in the teacher demographics, the researcher was unable to conduct an analysis as to whether the teacher demographics are related to teacher emotion beliefs. Future research should include a larger and more diverse teacher population in order to answer the research question on teacher demographics.