The meta-emotion philosophy in Italian early childhood educators: a pilot study

The “Meta-emotion philosophy” refers to “… parents' feelings and thoughts about their own and their children's emotions, their responses to their child's emotions, and their reasoning about these responses…” (Gottman et al. , 1996, p. 245). Parental meta-emotion philosophy directly affects children’s regulatory physiology and, in turn, children’s ability to regulate their own emotions. Despite the general acknowledgement that early childhood educators affect emotional development of very young infants, little is known about educators’ meta-emotion philosophy. Aim of the present study is to develop and validate a questionnaire - the Crèche Educators Emotional Style Questionnaire (CEESQ) - for measuring meta-emotion philosophy of early childhood educators toward children’s emotions and for examining whether this philosophy is related to their own emotions. Participants were 233 female educators, from 40 day care centers of three Tuscan towns (Italy). The CEESQ consisted of two sections: the first (22 items) concerns early childhood educators’ beliefs about their role in infant emotional regulation and their emotional style with children’s emotions. The second section (15 items) assesses awareness, acceptance and regulation of educators’ own emotions. Each item is rated on a 5-point scale ranging from 1 (rarely or never) to 5 (very often). Each CEESQ section was subjected to exploratory factor analysis using maximum likelihood method with Promax rotation. The results indicated a three factor solution for the first section (i.e. self efficacy, coaching and dismissing) and a two factor solution for the second section (i.e. meta-emotion and denial of own emotion). The Cronbach’s alpha for each subscale was acceptable. Correlations between educators emotional styles and their own emotional dimensions suggested that teachers can be seen as emotional workers in caring young children. We suggest to use CEESQ in order to develop educators awareness of their emotional labour as emotion socializers.