Teachers as Socializers of Social Emotional Learning (TASSEL)
In
conjunction with Susanne
Denham’s Child Development Lab, we will be exploring what
teachers do to help preschool children become emotionally
competent. This project is being funded by the Department of
Education’s Institute of Education Sciences and is entering its
second of three years. DISC Lab members are participating in this
larger project by doing child assessments and by doing classroom
observations. Additionally, funding was provided by Division 15
(Educational Psychology) of the American Psychological Association
to add observations of teachers’ global interactions with children
(not just focused on emotional interactions). DISC Lab members will
be conducting classroom observations throughout the year to observe
these interactions. These data will be used to help us understand
how global interactions are associated with teachers’ views of
children’s emotional socialization as well as assessments of
children’s
Variability in Teacher-child Interactions
Levels of teachers’ emotional, organizational, and
instructional have been linked to children’s development.
However, variability that children experience in teachers’
interactions
also seems to be important. We are currently working on
several manuscripts that examine how variability in teacher-child
interactions is related to children’s development. For example, two
teachers whose mean levels of emotional support may be quite
different
in their variability. One might consistently offer moderate
support; the other might sometimes be very supportive, and at other
times, might be very unsupportive. Our first paper (Curby,
Brock, & Hamre, under review) found that students in classrooms
with more emotional variability had worse outcomes—academic and
social—than those children in classrooms with less emotional
variability.
Getting Involved
If any of these specific projects interest you, or if you have
general
interest in the role of schools in promoting development, we invite
you
to become involved in our lab. Please feel free to email Dr.
Curby (tcurby@gmu.edu)
to discuss how you might get involved.