EDUCATION AND EMOTIONS
K-12
Abstract
Emotions can be linked to everything a person does. When students enter school, they
often have trouble with learning and may develop negative emotions to education. The aim of
this study was to discover and highlight what emotional regulation techniques work best with
students and getting them ready for learning. The study involved 3 focus groups from two
schools picked from across the country. Two were public schools. The second was a private
school.
Each focus group represented an age group. The first focus group had 2 children ages 5
and 12 years old. The second group had 2 children ages 14 and 17 years old. The group from the
private school had a focus group of 4 children ranging in ages from 5-17 years of age.
The results derived from the qualitative data analyses demonstrate three kinds of
classroom experiences participants feel work best for motivating them to learn and removing the
negative emotions that come from a stressful academic workload. The first classroom experience
or classroom activity is self-awareness exercises. The second is meditation. The third is selfregulation. These activities promoted enhanced self-awareness and helped children recognize
and understand their emotions.
While the younger children responded positively to a positive teacher-child
interaction the most, the older children responded well to a positive learning environment and
kinds of learning opportunities. These dimensions make up to a certain degree, the activities that
enabled emotional regulation and recognition among the participants. As children grow more and
more depressed and experience mental health problems at an early age, it is important to
recognize ways to help children learn to deal with the emotions that come from poor academic
performance, outside influences, and so forth. This is because there is a connection between
emotion and education.
Emotional regulation is an important aspect of education. Emotions are a strong and integral
force in a person’s life. When a student feels depressed from a bad grade or something
happening in their personal life and they do not have the tools to regulate such emotions, it may
lead to a lack of motivation and an unwillingness to complete school work or learn. By
understanding a teacher’s influence on student emotion regulation, and ways teachers can
provide activities to enable effective emotional regulation for students, schools may see better
learning outcomes.
Emotional regulation is important at any age, especially during the early years such as
when a student enters elementary school. However, as a child ages and enter middle school and
high school, techniques like self-reporting can help student gauge how they are feeling and
recognize what they are feeling so they can resolve the issue. “Self-report is a primary method to
assess emotions. In research on emotions in education, self-report has traditionally been used to
measure students’ test anxiety” (Pekrun, 2016, p. 43).
With school in the United States focused on standardized test results, test-taking,
homework completion, and classroom participation could spell victory or disaster for a student.
Aside from academic frustrations, children when in school may encounter bullying and peer
pressure further creating emotional turmoil that will require active participation in emotion
regulation activities to counter. Nevertheless, little is actually know about the formation of
emotional regulation through a student’s school years. This is even more of a mystery in
classroom interactions. “After children transition out of first grade, school-related research on
emotion regulation decreases significantly” (Wentzel & Ramani, 2016, p. 192).
Because of the decreasing availability of knowledge on emotional regulation for children
as they age, it is important to perform studies investigating what kind of mindfulness techniques
help with emotional regulation when they are placed in practice in schools. Additionally, of the
few classroom studies performed in the last twenty years that exist most have focused on
researching the emotions of infants and preschoolers with the oldest participants in these studies
being 5 or 6 years of age. There is too much divergence in research of how regulation is studied
and defined (affect regulation, emotion management, emotional control).
That is why new studies need to focus on emotional regulation across a broad range of
school aged children from age 5 to 17 or K-12. Deriving inspiration from adult contemplative
practices for emotion regulation could prove useful and translate well with children.
Research with adults suggests that contemplative practices such as meditation and yoga
impart a variety of benefits, from improved attention to reduced stress. Increasingly,
these practices are being adapted for use with children and introduced into childhood
education in order to foster the development of key self-regulation skills required for
academic achievement and emotional well-being (Shapiro et al., 2014, p. 1).
Since self-regulation skills are an important facet to emotional regulation, this paper will focus
on developing a study that examines how well certain emotional regulation techniques work on
children from ages 5-17.
Of the activities meant to help with emotional regulation, some will be tailored to meet
the needs of the various age groups. For example, younger children require more attention and
interaction with the teacher. Older children require more autonomy and ability to self-report.
“…as well as self-reports of student emotion as students are using the learning environment”
(Wixon & Arroyo, 2014, p. 471). The literature review will offer supporting evidence for why
emotional regulation through meditation and self-awareness and self-regulation could improve
how students deal with their emotions.
Literature Review
In a 2014 article discussing mindfulness based programs, creation of such programs are
aimed not to assist students in emotional regulation, but teachers.“Cultivating Awareness and
Resilience in Education (CARE for Teachers) is a mindfulness-based professional development
program designed to reduce stress and improve teachers’ performance and classroom learning
environments” (Jennings, Frank, Snowberg, Coccia & Greenberg, 2014, p. 374). Since teachers
are an integral part of learning, programs have been developed to help them deal with their work
load and create a better learning environment for students through positive teacher experiences.
The article review major improvements in teachers when it came to emotional wellbeing, stress, and other aspects of teaching. “Participation in the CARE program resulted in
significant improvements in teacher well-being, efficacy, burnout/time-related stress, and
mindfulness compared with controls. Evaluation data showed that teachers viewed CARE as a
feasible, acceptable, and effective method for reducing stress and improving performance”
(Jennings, Frank, Snowberg, Coccia & Greenberg, 2014, p. 374). This is an important result
because it demonstrates mindfulness exercises can have a positive impact on the emotional wellbeing of an individual. This program could translate well if applied to students, especially
children in high school.
“…self-regulatory skills associated with emotion and attention, self-representations, and
prosocial dispositions such as empathy and compassion…strengthen these positive qualities and
dispositions through systematic contemplative practices, which induce plastic changes in brain
function and structure, supporting prosocial behavior and academic success” (J. Davidson et al.,
2012, p. 146).
In the last ten years, training in mindfulness or as some would define, the deliberate
cultivation of in the moment non-judgmental focused awareness and attention, has grown from
its early western applications within the medical world to other fields, with recent applications
seen in education. A 2012 paper reviewed curricula and research that pertained to the
incorporation of mindfulness training (both indirectly and directly) into K-12 education, through
training teachers as well as directly instructing students. Recent revelations from neurobiology
research of mindfulness in adults proposes that continued mindfulness practice has the possibility
to improve emotional and attentional self-regulation while also promoting flexibility. This may
point towards important potential benefits for teachers and students.
The review highlights early research results on three descriptive mindfulness-based
educator training initiatives proposing that again, when a person has training in mindfulness
skills, it can increase that person’s sense of well-being and in the case of teachers, teaching selfefficacy. Learning this helps teachers manage classroom behavior better as well as maintain and
establish supportive relationships with their students. The review also mentions that since 2005,
for over a decade, fourteen studies of programs directly training students in mindfulness and selfregulation have jointly validated a range of social, psychological, and cognitive benefits to a
wide age range of students. (elementary (six studies revealed success) and high school (eight
studies revealed positive results). “These include improvements in working memory, attention,
academic skills, social skills, emotional regulation, and self-esteem, as well as self-reported
improvements in mood and decreases in anxiety, stress, and fatigue” (Meiklejohn et al., 2012, p.
291). The core features, target population, and educational goals, of ten established mindfulness-
based curricula provide an effective basis for future studies to use to discover appropriate
mindfulness techniques for all students from K-12.
In another review examining the effects of meditation, the program provided a conceptual
model that constructed two propositions of which demonstrate the assumption that meditation
could help increase mindfulness in students and thus increase emotional selfregulation/regulation.
Program elements such as duration, frequency of practice and type of instructor
influenced student outcomes. A conceptual model is put forward based on two
propositions: proposition 1—meditation positively influences student success by
increasing cognitive functioning; proposition 2—meditation positively influences student
success by increasing emotional regulation (Waters, Barsky, Ridd & Allen, 2014, p.
103).
Meditation is just one of many potential activities that could encourage emotional regulation in
students. This article helps highlight what many have deemed an appropriate tool to manage
stress and reduce negative emotions in people. Creating mindfulness is integral in creating a
means to regulation one’s emotions and should be considered via activities such as mindfulness.
The literature demonstrated several things. The first is, less research and information is
available in emotional regulation for children past first grade than expected. The second is
mindfulness activities tailored for adults have been proven to be very successful. The third is,
these activities can be translated for children of all age ranges. Lastly, meditation can be one
mindfulness activity that when translated from adult oriented to child-oriented can help children
by encouraging increased emotional regulation.
The next section will focus on the study and the three activities that students in the focus group
and their educators found were most engaging for them in relation to increased motivation,
increased positive emotions and so forth.
For this study, data will be gathered through contact with principals from three schools.
One from a private school and two from a public school. They will gather two students from
classrooms with the private school gathering four students and have a teacher accompany them.
From there, the teacher will be instructed on three exercises that will be given to them to teach
the two students. This will be done during lunch. The first focus group will have a 5-year-old and
12-year-old. The second focus group will have a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old. The third focus
group will have four children ranging in age between 5 and 17 years of age.
After three days of three activities, one activity per day, the principal will give the
educator and students a questionnaire to fill out. On a scale of 1-5 they will state how effective
each activity was. The results will be scanned or faxed and the information will be analyzed.
Questions developed in the questionnaire will be derived from standard self-report measures of
mindfulness that are FFMQ (Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire) and MAAS (Mindful
Attention and Awareness Scale). These measures will serve as reference as well when examining
the results.
The target audience are students from k-12 and teachers/educators. The research
techniques applied to find suitable activities to measure effectiveness will be taken from research
articles no later than 2012 found through article databases like Google Scholar, JURN.org, and
RefSeek.com. These search engines provide millions of articles, theses, and chapters and search
terms like ‘mindfulness training’, ‘mindfulness techniques’, ‘emotional regulation activities’,
‘self-regulation’ will be inputted to produce results that could support and provide basis for
formation of activities for the study. All studies researched will be qualitative in design with
focus on student training. The qualitative research techniques evaluated will be participant
observation, focus groups, and in-depth interviews which will be applied to the study.
Expected Conclusions
The study produced significant results. The qualitative methods observed from the
research and then applied to the study provided a means of collecting qualitative and quantitative
data as well as assessing the validity of some of the assumptions made such as meditation being
a useful mindfulness activity and which activities do well with certain age groups. The first
method, participant observation was performed by the teacher and principal as the teacher taught
the activity to the students and the principal observed the responses from the teacher and students
when they filled out the questionnaire. The strengths in this method are that it is easy to perform
because it is just observing and information can be collected from nonverbal cues making
assessment easier and faster. The weaknesses are lack of communication while observing and
inability to record enough information such as verbal cues and subjective responses that are often
hidden.
The second method, focus groups provided a lot of information both from the research
perspective and the study. Some strengths are that the focus group demonstrated that kids from
ages 5-17 can use mindfulness activities to culture improved emotional regulation based on the
responses given. They can also show which activities did not do well with certain age groups.
The weaknesses in this method are lack of control in directing the focus group’s attention on the
activities and the need for bigger samples of participants in order to get a more accurate result.
The in-depth interviews were administered by each school’s respective principal and
provided detailed information and results that could only be gathered through face-to-face
interviews. The second phase of interviewing came with a skype chat with each principal and
receiving the results from the questionnaires via fax. The strengths of the in-depth interviews are
that they reveal a lot of information that include verbal and non-verbal cues. They also provide
qualitative answers in context. The weaknesses are the time and effort needed to perform the
interview and the potential inaccuracy from the answers.
Overall, the younger children preferred the third activity (self-regulation exercises) that
required the teacher the most and supported more teacher-student interaction. The median age
children liked the first activity (self-awareness exercises) because they were easy to do and did
not require too much teacher-student interaction. The high school aged students favored the
second activity (meditation) because it gave them complete autonomy, quiet, and time to relax
and reflect on anything that was on their minds or happened to them that day.
Name
Age
Activity
Sam
5
3
Duncan
12
1
Lucy
14
1
Sarah
17
2
Pamela
5
3
Eugene
12
1
Iris
14
1
Anthony
17
2
Gender
M
M
F
F
f
m
f
m
References
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Jennings, P., Frank, J., Snowberg, K., Coccia, M., & Greenberg, M. (2013). Improving
classroom learning environments by Cultivating Awareness and Resilience in Education
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