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

Meta-emotion philosophy has been theoretically 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 main aim of the current study was to develop and test the psychometric properties of a self-report questionnaire assessing meta-emotion philosophy in early childhood teachers (the Creche Educator Emotional Style Questionnaire - CEESQ). CEESQ consisted of two sections: the first referred to children's emotions (CEESQ-Children's Emotions) and the second to early childhood educators' emotions (CEESQ-Individual Emotions). Participants were 306 early childhood teachers, recruited from 58 day care centers in the center and south of Italy. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses for the first section identified three dimensions: two styles used by early childhood teachers to deal with children's emotions (i.e., Coaching and Dismissing), and teachers' Self-efficacy as Emotional Socializers. Similar analyses for the second section identified two dimensions: Emotional Self-efficacy (i.e., teachers' awareness and ability to deal with their own emotions), and Denial of Emotion (i.e., teachers' lack of acceptance of their own emotions). Both CEESQ sections demonstrated an equivalence in structure considering having/not having own children, years of working experience, academic education level. No main or interaction effects pertaining to teachers' individual characteristics emerged in any of the CEESQ dimensions. Lastly, 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. Administering CEESQ and discussing its scores with teachers could work as a prompt in order to discuss and mentalize teachers' emotional work as emotional socializers. (C) 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.