Do the Behaviors of Early Childhood Education Teachers Promote Children's Progressive Autonomy? The Role of Interpersonal Emotional Regulation and its Consequences for Teachers' Occupational Well-Being

Abstract

Despite its centrality within the Convention on the Rights of the Child, teachers’ behaviors promoting progressive autonomy, the psychological processes involved in their implementation and their consequences for teachers’ well-being has been neglected. Two studies assess early childhood teachers’ promoting progressive autonomy behaviors and their relationship with their strategies to regulate children’s emotions and their own job well-being. Overall, results support the presence of a virtuous circle where teachers use of strategies improving children’s emotions is associated to higher levels of progressive autonomy promotion and job well-being which in turn has been related to willingness to use afect improvement strategies.