Teachers as co-regulators of children’s emotions: A descriptive study of teacher-child emotion dialogues in special education

The study examined how teachers and children with emotional and behavioral disturbances engage in dialogues about children's emotional experiences. Dialogues about emotions are an important strategy for teachers to co-regulate children's emotions but have remained understudied. This study aimed to explore whether the Autobiographical Emotional Events Dialogue (AEED) can help to assess the quality of teacher-child emotion dialogues about past emotional events and examined associations with child behavior and teacher-child relationship quality. The sample included 85 children and 70 teachers from special education schools serving children with emotional and behavioral disturbances. Teacher-child dialogues were videotaped and coded using the 16 rating scales of the AEED coding system (Koren-Karie, Oppenheim, Carasso, & Haimovich, 2003). The scales (except child boundary dissolution) could be reliably assessed. A Principal Component Analysis yielded 4 factors: Adequate task completion (coherent dialogues and positive child task behavior), Negativity (hostility and teacher boundary dissolution), Teacher Guidance (involvement, structuring, and acceptance), and Resolution (positive closure of negative stories). Child age, verbal intelligence, prosocial behavior, and higher teacher-child relationship scores (higher closeness, lower conflict) were positively associated with the quality of the dialogues but behavior problems were not. The study provides first insight in teachers' scaffolding of dialogues with children about negative emotional events in special education serving children with emotional and behavioral disturbances.