In the school context, the skills required for academic functioning are a significant component of adaptive functioning. However, to date, little research has considered the role of emotion regulation within the behaviours that support or obstruct learning and achievement at school. It is understood that ER supports social-competence and cumulatively, academic success (e.g. Kochanska, Murray, & Harlan, 2000) and also that the interactions within the early years of school are particularly taxing on a young child’s emotion regulation skills. Play with peers is charged with conflict at an age when peers are neither skilled at negotiation, nor able to offer support for emotion regulation (Denham, 2007). Learning tasks require sustained attention and classroom rules are hard to follow when a child is overwhelmed with feelings. In addition, the social cost of uncontrolled emotional outbursts is high with both peers and teachers. Initiating, maintaining and negotiating social goals, earning acceptance and succeeding in the cognitive skills of reading and number tasks (Raver, Blackburn, Bancroft, & Torp, 1999) require
the cultivation of an emotional sentinel that can organise the increasing complexity of a child’s own emotions within the social world of school.
Emotional competence involves the expression of emotion in a way that is advantageous for the individual. Children learn which expressions of emotion facilitate specific goals and must also understand which are the appropriate affective messages for the given context. What may be appropriate in the home and with one individual (a parent or sibling) may not be appropriate in school. As they mature, children begin to realise that overt expressions of socially disapproved feelings may be controlled and that a person may feel a certain way ‘on the inside’ but show a different display of emotion depending on the goals and rules of the given situation (Denham, 1998). This is particularly true during middle childhood when children learn with experience that their goals are not always met by freely externalising strong feelings. Emotional messaging becomes increasingly complex at this age and can incorporate more blended signals (Denham, 2007).
Emotional expression is regarded as an effective ER strategy in school context and may have a powerful effect on the social dynamics (Rimé, 2007; Yan, Dillard, & Shen, 2012). At preschool age, the expression of specific emotions relates to successful peer interactions and to teachers’ evaluations of a child’s friendliness/aggression (Denham, 2007).
Decrease Increase
Negative emotion Trying to calm down after
being shoved in the playground
Exaggerating frustration during a task to gain support from peer or teacher
Positive emotion Stifling laughter in class at a
friend’s joke Turning to a friend for support to help complete a
boring task
Figure 2.2: Examples of emotion regulation goals in the school context, adapted from Gross (2014), p9.
The circumstances under which a student is motivated to decrease the experiential aspects of negative emotion are easy to imagine (see Figure 2.2). For
instance, if a child is angered in class by the unkind actions of a peer, they might try to down-regulate their anger by switching their attention to their work assignment or by seeking support from a friend or teacher. It is also useful to have a range of strategies that facilitate the up-regulation of positive emotion expression (i.e. increase the intensity or duration), perhaps in circumstances where the task is one that a student finds unpleasant or boring. Although it may seem difficult to imagine, there may be social situations where it is also useful to be able to up-regulate negative or down-regulate positive emotions. In the school context, exaggeration of frustration during a complex mathematics task may lead to the support of a teacher to aid completion of the activity. In school, it is also socially beneficial to be able to down-regulate positive emotions. For instance, stifling the giggles in a school assembly would be advantageous in a context where the rules require such controlled behaviour.
Insights from developmental research indicate that difficulties in effective emotion regulation in childhood may have serious implications for mental health (Aldao et al., 2010). Such problems may not fully manifest until early adulthood, as such an understanding of the antecedent ER indicators of future difficulties may provide clues towards vulnerabilities. The regulation of physiological arousal has been hypothesised to affect children’s social relationship by facilitating their ability to flexibly engage and disengage with their environment (Porges, 2003). These skills can be considered fundamental to adaptive functioning as in the school context children need to decide when to engage with peers and teachers (i.e. talk, or play with them) and when to disengage (e.g. ignore them). The flexibility to engage and disengage during social interactions in such a way may be easier for children who are able to efficiently regulate their emotions (Graziano, Reavis, Keane, & Calkins, 2007). Unsurprisingly, children who appropriately regulate their emotions are more socially competent and more popular with peers (Eisenberg et al., 1996; Fabes & Eisenberg, 1992). Conversely, children who have difficulties regulating their emotions effectively are found to have interpersonal difficulties and greater externalising problems at school such as antisocial behaviour and hyperactivity (Rydell, Berlin, & Bohlin, 2003), anxiety and internalising problems (Braet et al., 2014; Rydell, Thorell, & Bohlin, 2007).
The demands of learning new academic material and developing sophisticated social skills in the middle years of primary, in combination with the gradual decline of the extensive support offered in early school years, presents a challenge for many young children. Such demands are likely to elicit a range of emotions to be regulated, including excitement, frustration, anxiety and fear.