Meta-emotion philosophy in early childhood teachers: Psychometric properties of the Crèche Educator Emotional Style Questionnaire

Meta-emotion philosophy has been conceptualized as an emotional connection between parents and children which reflects parents’ awareness, acceptance, and regulation of their own emotions and their awareness, acceptance, and regulation of their children’s emotions. The current study aims to develop and test the psychometric properties of a self-report questionnaire assessing meta-emotion philosophy in early childhood teachers (the Crèche Educator Emotional Style Questionnaire – CEESQ). CEESQ consisted of two sections: Children’s Emotions and Individual Emotions. 306 early childhood teachers, recruited from 58 Italian day care centers, participated. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses for the first section identified three dimensions - Coaching and Dismissing style to deal with children’s emotions, and teachers’ Self-efficacy as Emotional Socializers; for the second section, two dimensions: Emotional Self-efficacy (i.e., teachers’ awareness and ability to deal with own emotions), and Denial of Emotion (i.e., teachers’ lack of acceptance of own emotions). Equivalence in structure of both sections were measured considering many variables. Both Emotional Self-efficacy and Self-efficacy as an Emotional Socializer were positively associated with a Coaching style, with Self-efficacy as an Emotional Socializer playing a partial mediation role. CEESQ could work as a prompt in order to help teachers to mentalize their emotional work as emotional socializers.