Students were aware of the importance of understanding and labelling feelings and social situations, especially when referring to their practice and the work they do with children to get them to express their emotions.
“I’ve done quite a lot in the nursery about labelling feelings as and when they occur. So, if they’re feeling scared you can identify that so they understand that feeling they’re having at that moment rather than showing them a flash card that’s fear rather than just saying this is fear and this is what it they would understand and that has been a big part of our teaching” Spencer
Concurring with this, Sam stated:
“Looking at the children that are just coming in now… sort of knowing the kind of things they might be feeling and looking for, if they are crying or lost or something, you know… using what I know about how they might be feeling is the work I am looking for (laughs) I think that’s it”
Within the context of the Fda programme Drew remembered:
“One of the things I remember actually doing from the course that I applied in practice, was feelings cards. It's helping with their feelings. They're empathising the other children to understand, how the other children are feeling, or if you don't share with this child, do you think he might be sad? Do you think he might be happy?”
Consequently, it is evident that to students it was important to pinpoint and understand emotions. The importance of labelling, understanding and engaging with emotions is explored by McLaren (2010). According to her, channelling
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“interpret the message our emotions carry and make use of the instinct ouremotions contain” (McLaren 2010, p. 33).
Giving great importance to empathy, McLaren (2010) explains that all emotions are valid and should not be seen as negative as they serve a purpose. What is more, that these emotions can be effectively expressed and managed if there is an
understanding of them. It seems that the students have an implicit understanding of this especially in the context of their practice and how they support children. To them, making sure the children in their care can express and label emotions is vital to their development.
Nevertheless, most of these students referred to the socio-emotional intelligence of the children in their care. When I first began looking at the data, it appeared that the application of socio-emotional intelligence was going to be the easiest area to identify. All students provided meaningful examples demonstrating how they would support children in developing their socio-emotional intelligence, for example by using emotion cards or labelling the feelings. This concurs with the literature review findings presenting many of the initiatives in place for children to develop social and emotional skills (DFES 2003, 2005a, 2007; Humphrey et al. 2008; Allen 2011).
However, throughout the interviews I noticed that students were not identifying socio-emotional intelligence in terms of their own practice – how they applied their socio-emotional intelligence – but rather how they supported the children in their care to apply theirs. What is more, at times students were talking about specific areas of socio-emotional intelligence but were not always aware of it. For instance, Alex constantly referred to confidence and attributed it to many situations. Realising this, at one point Alex said:
"I keep saying the word confidence and I don’t know why, I keep saying it is to do with confidence, having the inner confidence in your belief in yourself.”
Similarly, Sam was aware of how their behaviour and language may affect others: “You do have to be so aware of everything… the one thing that you say you do have to be aware of how does it affect everybody around you”
Whilst Jules told me:
“telling my team that the business had been sold …that was a challenge [to tell them] in a nice way without sort of treading on toes and that they were still in employment rather than just sort of totally let go of the hook”
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Furthermore, Jules asserted that it is important to treat people well “withdiplomacy…not just a bull in a china shop.” Another example of this was when Lou said to be a:
“Fairly level person emotionally but I can get upset easily when people themselves are upset, that make me feel sad.”
Here Lou was describing empathy as well as managing emotions. These students did not label the notion whilst talking about it. Others talked about feeling strong or inner strength which could be attributed to being resilient. With mentions of
“treading on toes”, “diplomacy” and “a kindness factor”, it is clear that the students’ background and culture has influenced how they talked about the subject.
However, some of these terms might be misunderstood as they could be taken too literally. This is something that I can relate to as my first language is not English and I have experienced misunderstandings due to colloquialisms, traditional sayings and even pronunciation. In the literature review I discussed how culture does influence the expression of emotions and social interactions (Rogoff 2006; Uchida et al. 2009; De Leersnyder et al. 2010). Therefore, even though a personal vocabulary where students can gain socio-emotional literacy based on their own lived experience and already gained knowledge, culture and background could be put into place, care must be taken to avoid further confusion.
Nevertheless, according to De Leersnyder et al. (2010) some level of acculturation where people assimilate emotional responses inevitably happens with those who spend time together. I would argue that this also happens with people who work in the same field, read the same sources and learn related topics. Therefore, if
students and lecturers label their experiences of emotions and social interactions in similar ways and with a mutual understanding, their development of socio-emotional intelligence could be more meaningful and further enriched.
Whilst investigating labelling emotions I came across the positive lexicography project (Lomas 2015; 2016); this project aims to “chart positive mental states that may be particular to certain cultures” (Lomas 2015, p. 1), by creating a dictionary of untranslatable words linked to positive emotions and wellbeing to extend the
emotional vocabulary. It is clear that the idea of developing a mutual understanding is already being explored. This is something I want to follow up in my practice development and will be explored fully within the next chapter.
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However, as previously mentioned, there is a wealth of terminology available. Even culture can affect the way we articulate ideas or express how we feel and avocabulary to label feelings must be personal to our own experience, whilst being generic enough for others to be able to understand how we feel. The important aspect of developing such resource is that it will allow both students and lecturers to learn, identify and eventually channel emotions in a constructive manner. As they are able to match their array of emotions with a word which to them feels right, they will cognitively will be able to make sense of that emotion (McLaren 2010).
Todres (2007, p. 42) refers to this notion of understanding ourselves and others as using “words that work” as a way to develop “sense making” to develop a mutual understanding. Consequently, within the practice development tool I will present various links and ideas that may be useful for students and lecturers when developing a personal vocabulary which will in turn enrich their understanding of others.