Early Childhood Teacher Preparation, Lesson Planning, and Emotion-Focused Teaching Practices

This study employed an explanatory sequential mixed-methods design to examine early childhood teacher education, lesson planning, and emotion-focused teaching practices within an early childhood education Alternative Licensure Program (ALP) at the University of Illinois Chicago. Teachers’ (n=20) emotion-focused teaching (EFT) practices during implementation of their lesson plans were quantitatively evaluated using the EMOtion Teaching Rating Scale (EMOTERS). Their EMOTERS scores were analyzed and separated into High EFT, Moderate EFT, and Low EFT groups. Their emotion-focused lesson plans were qualitatively analyzed to determine characteristics and detect themes and patterns in the data. The qualitative and quantitative data were integrated and the findings revealed that teachers in the High EFT group had three lesson plan characteristics in common. These characteristics include focusing on emotional rather than behavioral challenges, aligning lesson plan objectives and strategies with the challenges teachers identified, and creating responsive strategies to help children learn something new about the emotion-focused topic. The implications this has for effective preservice SEL education are explored.