The importance of positive emotions among early childhood educators

ABSTRACT

Bearing in mind the educational process has its cognitive and non-cognitive determinants, this article emphasizes the significance of early childhood educators’ emotions in their work with children and focuses on the analysis of their positivity. A total of 152 pre-service and in-service early childhood educators participated in this study. The participants self-evaluated using the Positive and Negative Affective Schedule scale daily for 13 days. The results showed that participants most frequently felt interested, active, determined, and awake. They felt ashamed and hostile the least frequently. Therefore, they experienced more positive emotions than negative ones with a relatively high positivity ratio. The pre-service educators experienced negative emotions more frequently and had a lower positivity ratio than in-service educators. This article emphasizes the importance of providing support to pre- and in-service early childhood educators in the domain of their affective states during their initial education and professional development.

KEYWORDS:

• Affective states
• pre-service and in-service early childhood educators
• implicit pedagogy
• positive psychology

Acknowledgments

This work has been supported in part by the University of Rijeka under the project number (uniri-drustv-18-11) ‘Children’s Well-Being in Transition Periods: The Empirical Validation of Ecological-Dynamic Model’. We thank to Sanja Čačić for her support with this research study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the University of Rijeka, Croatia [(uniri-drustv-18-11): Children’s well-being in transition periods: The empirical validation of Ecological-Dynamic model.

Notes on contributors

Sanja Tatalović Vorkapić

Sanja Tatalović Vorkapić, PhD, is Full Professor in the field of psychology at the Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Rijeka, Croatia. She teaches all psychology-related subjects to future early childhood educators and primary school teachers. Her research interests involve early childhood education issues, children’s well-being, positive psychology and personality psychology. She has written 200 publications, she has been involved in numerous national and international scientific projects and has received two awards for excellence in academic teaching and for excellence in social sciences.

Doris Velan

Doris Velan is a PhD student and lecturer in the field of pedagogy at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia. She teaches pedagogy-related subjects to future early childhood educators and primary school teachers. Her research interests involve early childhood education issues and children’s well-being. She has written eight publications and she has been involved in one national and one international scientific project. Also, she works as an expert associate in the educational field at the kindergarten ‘Olga Ban’ Pazin.