Observing Emotional Interactions Between Teachers and Students in Elementary School Classrooms

Abstract

Fostering emotional skills in the elementary (primary) school classroom can lead to improved learning outcomes, more prosocial behavior, and positive emotional development. Incorporating emotional skill development into the naturalistic and implicit teaching environment is a key feature of what is meant by the emotional climate of the classroom. The emotional content of spontaneous teacher-student interactions was of interest in the current study. The investigation focused on how teachers manage emotional events and, in particular, what positive strategies they use while doing so. A total of 60 hours of observation took place in the classrooms of six teachers who had been nominated for having exceptional positive classroom environments. These observations were reduced to prominent themes: (1) fostering classroom relationships, (2) setting and managing emotional guidelines, (3) being emotionally aware, and (4) managing emotional situations. The study provided support for Harvey and Evans' (2003) model of the classroom emotional climate.

Keywords:

• emotional climate
• elementary classrooms
• teacher-student relationships
• emotional development
• children

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank all members of the Te Āniwaniwa research team for their encouragement and support throughout this project, and to acknowledge with appreciation the grant funding from the Marsden Research Fund, Royal Society of New Zealand.