Chinese Preschool Teachers’ Implementation of Practices to Support Young Children’s Social-Emotional Competence

Abstract

ABSTRACT Research Findings: Preschool social-emotional education has become an increasingly important area of research and practice in mainland China. The social development domain has been recognized as an independent preschool curricular domain since 2001. Little is known, however, about the specific practices that preschool teachers in China are using to promote children’s social-emotional competence. An investigator-developed and validated measure, the Social-Emotional Teaching Practices Questionnaire-Chinese (SETP-C), was used to gather data about social-emotional practices from a sample of 1,599 Chinese teachers in 120 preschools. Chinese preschool teachers reported they were implementing many social-emotional practices included on the SETP-C, but were less likely to use and less confident in implementing practices that address the needs of children with persistent challenging behaviors. Teacher’s role in the classroom, having teaching certification, years of teaching experience, use of a social-emotional curriculum, child-to-teacher ratio, inclusion of children with disabilities, and age group of children had statistically significant and noteworthy associations with teachers’ reported frequency of use and confidence in implementing social-emotional practices. Practice or Policy: Findings from this study support the multidimensionality of preschool social-emotional practices and suggest the need for further attention to teacher, classroom, and program-wide variables related to teachers’ practice implementation in support of young children’s social-emotional competence.