Next Coffee/ Tea and Talk": Wednesday March 30th 2022: The Development of Children`s Social-emotional Competences in Childcare: Contributions of Child Characteristics, Caregivers, and Peers

 

Meeting-ID: 616 8839 9693

Kenncode: 117700

 

Abstract of the presentation in the next session: 

 

Social-emotional competencies in early childhood lay an important foundation for success in school and beyond. Children who show curiosity, motivation, initiative, and endurance in learning situations and interact more positively with their peers already before entering school usually have greater academic success later on. These competencies evolve through interactions with adults and peers. Childcare can be seen as an important context for their development as most children spend a significant amount of time there. Hence, this thesis will explore how interactions with caregivers and peers might benefit the development of social-emotional skills, depending on the individual characteristics of children. The first paper looked into how caregivers’ behaviors and children’s characteristics contribute to the development of social-emotional competencies. The results indicate that high-quality caregiver-child interactions that facilitate and scaffold learning and development enhance children’s learning behaviors. Furthermore, they suggest differential effects, i.e., stronger associations for children with low emotion regulation competence. Besides interactions with caregivers, children spend a considerable amount of their time in childcare interacting with peers. Therefore, the second and third papers will explore the effects of the peer group on children’s social-emotional competencies and how these effects might differ for different children. I expect children visiting childcare groups with higher social skills on average to develop more positive social skills compared to children visiting childcare groups with lower social skills on average. Again, I expect this effect to be stronger for children with lower emotion regulation competence.