The impact of emotional education on preschoolers' behaviours

ABSTRACT: Emotional literacy is a complex concept which children begin to acquire in the preschool years and greatly depends on the roles of individuals such as parents and teachers. The components of emotional literacy such as facial recognition and emotional understanding contribute to academic and social achievements and also workplace success. Parent-child emotion education program, Coaching and Rewarding Emotional Skills (CARES) was adapted and implemented within a preschool in order to assess the effectiveness in the classroom setting. It was expected that after participating in the program preschool children would display an increase in emotional understanding, compliance and pro-social behaviours. Overall 32 children of ages 4 and 5 were divided into two groups according to their preschool class; the experimental group participated in 6 weeks of the CARES-T (T) program and the control group did not receive any emotion education. Before and after the program, both groups were assessed regarding emotion recognition abilities, behaviour characteristics and empathy through computer tasks and parent and teacher questionnaires. Participants who took part in the CARES program developed better emotion recognition skills and were both faster and better able to label emotions than those who did not. They also displayed less intense problem behaviours with particular emphasis on uncaring behaviours. Unexpectedly the program had no effect on the participants’ empathy levels as reported by parents and teachers. These findings suggest that emotion education is beneficial for preschool aged children and their emotional literacy development. Keywords: Emotional literacy, Coaching and Rewarding Emotional Skills (CARES), Emotion Education. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………