Project Activities
Over a five-year period, the EMOTERS was developed through a process that began with a literature review that was used to generate possible items. Draft items were then compared, consolidated, and coded in an iterative fashion with archival classroom video. Subsequently, new classroom videos were collected in preschool classrooms where teachers also provided ratings of children's social-emotional and learning behaviors. The EMOTERS was used to code video segments with multiple coders providing ratings for nearly every segment. Rasch analyses were used to evaluate and refine the items and associations with child outcomes were evaluated.
Structured Abstract
Setting
Data were collected in 18 preschool classrooms in four community-based or University-affiliated child care programs. Two centers, with three classrooms each, were located in a large midwestern urban area. The remaining centers and classrooms were located in mid-Atlantic suburban areas.
Sample
Children (n=150) were on average 47.78 months old (SD = 7.15, missing n = 12). Seventy-one of the children were female (47.3%) and 79 were male (52.7%). Parents identified 80 children as Hispanic, 80 as White, 10 as Black, and 38 as multiracial/other (missing n = 22). Families reported the full range of income levels but the average income level placed most families in the $35,000 - $75,000 income bands. Classrooms were staffed by multiple teachers (lead, co-lead, assistant, floaters) (n=47). The majority of teachers (95.7%) presented as female. Of the teachers consented to participate, only 25 completed the demographic questionnaire appended to the consent form. Of these, 18 teachers selected an ethnic identity of Hispanic. When asked about race, 4 teachers identified as Black, and 7 as White, and the remaining teachers wrote in a racial identity of Hispanic or Latino.
Assessment
The EMOtion TEaching Rating Scale (EMOTERS) was used to observe the emotion-focused teaching practices of preschool teachers. The EMOTERS was developed to align with the emotion socialization framework and captures teachers' Modeling, Responding, and Instructing practices. It consists of 43 dichotomous and multiple select items describing observable teaching practices. Coders take unstructured notes while watching 10-minute segments of classroom video before completing ratings. The instrument is freely available from
www.emoters.org
Research design and methods
Initial measure development was informed by a review of research, practice, and policy documents and by results of expert panel reviews and preliminary psychometric analyses of archival classroom video coding. We collected new classroom videos and teacher ratings of children's social-emotional and learning behaviors. Multiple raters coded each video segment (n=1,606) with the EMOTERS. Rasch analyses were used to evaluate and refine the items. Rasch-based scores were used to relate the EMOTERS to child outcomes.
Control condition
Due to the design of this study there is no control condition.
Key measures
Measures of student outcomes included the Emotion Expression Rating Scale (EERS), Emotion Regulation Checklist (ERC), Social Competence and Behavior Evaluation (SCBE-30), and The Individualized Classroom Assessment Scoring System (inCLASS). Teachers were observed using the Emotion Teaching Rating Scale (EMOTERS). Teachers completed the following self-report measures: Self-Expressiveness in the Classroom Questionnaire (SECQ), Responding. Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale-Teacher (CCNES-T), Teachers' Interactional Style Questionnaire, Teacher Self-Report of Teaching Practices, Depression Scale (CES-D), Child Care Worker Job Stress Inventory (CCW-JSI), and Self-Reported Emotional Intelligence (SREIS).
Data analytic strategy
Multi-facet Rasch models were employed to assess reliability of the EMOTERS and iteratively inform item refinement. Multiple-regression and structural equation models tested the associations between the EMOTERS and child outcomes.
Key outcomes
The main outcomes of the validation study are as follows:
People and institutions involved
IES program contact(s)
Products and publications
Products: The products of this project included initial evidence of the EMOTERS instrument's reliability and validity; a publicly available instrument description that includes full item language and scoring instructions; a manualized online self-paced training; and a test of coder reliability. Peer reviewed publications were also be produced.
Publications:
Gordon, R. A. (2016). High Stakes Quality Measures in Early Care and Education. Available at SSRN 3883670.
Gordon, R. A., Peng, F., Curby, T. W., & Zinsser, K. M. (2021). An introduction to the many-facet Rasch model as a method to improve observational quality measures with an application to measuring the teaching of emotion skills. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 55, 149-164.
Jackson, V. M., Estrada, M., Zinsser, K. M., Curby, T. W., & Gordon, R. A. (2024). A Comparison of Emotion-Focused Teaching in and Outside of Planned Social-Emotional Learning Activities. Early Childhood Education Journal, 52(4), 725-734.
Zinsser, K. M., Gordon, R. A., & Jiang, X. (2021). Parents' socialization of preschool-aged children's emotion skills: A meta-analysis using an emotion-focused parenting practices framework. Early Childhood Research Quarterly, 55, 377-390.
Zinsser, K. M., Curby, T. W., Gordon, R. A., & Moberg, S. (2023). A unidimensional model of emotion-focused teaching in early childhood. Learning Environments Research, 26(3), 933-949.
Supplemental information
Co-Principal Investigators: Curby, Timothy; Gordon, Rachel
- EMOTERS items vary in difficulty for teachers and reflect the different constructs (Gordon et al., 2021).
- Teachers' EMOTERS practices are associated — within time and over time — to children's social interactions with teachers and peers, and engagement in tasks (Curby et al., 2021).
- EMOTERS constructs are arranged hierarchically with modeling practices being generally easier, instruction practices generally harder, and responding practices in the middle (See Figure 1). Relatedly, EMOTERS constructs can be viewed separately (Modeling, Responding, Instructing) or combined to represent a unitary view of Emotion-focused Teaching. (Zinnser et al., 2023).
- When teachers engage in research-provided structured high-quality social-emotional lessons, EMOTERS scores are significantly higher than during teaching as usual (Jackson et al., 2024)
Questions about this project?
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