Preparing early educators for the current context of social emotional learning: A content analysis of course descriptions

Despite the well-established need for teacher preparation in child guidance and social emotional learning, studies have found a lack of robust course offerings in these areas. Further, the United States context for children’s social emotional development is changing due to the global pandemic, racial unrest, and increased gun violence. The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) has put forth updated teacher competencies to address the changing context as well as new research on early learning. However, little is known about how teacher education programs have implemented the updated guidelines around teacher competencies. For this journal article, we systematically examined 314 early childhood education programs of study from U.S. universities. We share a content analysis of 237 course descriptions from courses dedicated to children’s social emotional learning. We found 26% of programs require no course on social emotional learning. We also identifed the four most and three least represented competencies around social emotional learning. Our content analysis reveals that behaviorist theory is predominant in the design of courses and sociocultural influences are under-represented. We provide implications for regularly updating course descriptions to address the needs of children and families in the ever-changing context of education.尽管儿童引导与社会情感学习领域的教师培养需求早已得到学界广泛认可，但现有研究表明，该领域的高质量课程供给仍存在显著缺口。进一步而言，受全球疫情、种族动荡以及枪支暴力事件频发的影响，美国儿童社会情感发展的整体环境正经历深刻转变。美国幼儿教育协会（National Association for the Education of Young Children, NAEYC）已发布更新版教师能力标准，以适配这一不断变化的行业环境，并回应早期学习领域的最新研究成果。然而，目前学界对教师教育项目如何落实新版教师能力标准的具体实施路径仍知之甚少。针对这一研究空白，本文系统性调研了美国高校的314个幼儿教育专业培养方案，并对其中237门专门面向儿童社会情感学习的课程描述开展内容分析。研究发现，26%的培养方案未设置任何社会情感学习相关课程。此外，我们还识别出社会情感学习领域覆盖度最高的四项能力标准，以及覆盖度最低的三项能力标准。本次内容分析结果显示，课程设计中行为主义理论占据主导地位，而社会文化相关影响因素的体现则明显不足。本文针对如何定期更新课程描述，以适配不断变化的教育环境、满足儿童与家庭的实际需求提出了实践启示。