Block 2: References and activities.

Activities:

First of all we worked in an activity related with the emotional regulation. To work emotional regulation with children, we chose an activity inspired on a video we found on Youtube. The activity is called the Marshmallow Test.

The required conditions to do the experiment are to leave the child alone in a room without possible distractions, just the table over which we will put the marshmallow in a plate and the chair where the child will sit. We will see the child’s reactions and movements through a camera, which will be placed inside the room without the child knowing it.

Once we have put the marshmallow in the plate, the child will be explained that he/she will be left alone and that he/she has two possibilities.

One of them is to eat the marshmallow and the other one will be to wait until we come back. It is so important to emphasize the benefits that waiting will have: getting another marshmallow and being able to eat two in spite of one.

Which are the objectives we want to achieve by this first part of the activity?

We want them to have self-control of impulses through deferred gratification, so, the child will have to resist temptations if he/she wants to get another marshmallow. Furthermore, they will experiment feelings like frustration or impotence, so that, the child will have to deal with feelings like these and, even the child will not know it, he/she will be developing its emotional regulation’s skills.

Once this first part is finished and the child has or has not get the extra marshmallow depending on the reaction he/she has had, if he/she has eaten it before we come back or not, we will add a post-experimental activity which, even if it does not appear in the video, we have considered interesting in order to work a bit more on the emotional regulation dimension.On this post-experimental part, children will be given a sheet of paper which they will have to separate in two halves by making a straight line. On the left side they will have to draw the character that comes into their minds when they think of the desire to eat the marshmallow. On the other side of the paper, they will have to draw the character that comes into their minds when they think of the consequences of eating the marshmallow before the teacher coming back. Thereafter, they will have to put a name to each character to identify them.

Finally, they will group in pairs or small groups and they will have to explain their drawings and why have they drawn them the way they did.

The objectives of this second part of the activity, wants to achieve child’s expression of feelings using drawing as a source to make it easier. Children of that age can have several difficulties when expressing their feelings and drawing and then talking but about their drawing is an indirect way we, as teachers, can use to start developing the difficult dimension feeling’s expression represents. 

We also did a debate in class in which we were asked to defend the idea that is needed to adapt the answer yes to the question "Do we need to adapt emotional education because of gender differences?". Our main ideas where:

There is evidence that certain brain areas devoted to emotional processing may be larger in women than in men and it also shows brain activity by gender difference. So boys and girls they process their emotions differently.

For instance, their strategies to deal with stress. There are two basic responses: action or interaction. Women tend to feel an urge for achieving safety through interactions, being friendly and talking. However, men tend to follow the “fight” or “flight” system, moving toward action or inaction when stressed and seeking for safety. 

That is an interesting fact in order to adapt the emotional education to gender differences because boys and girls have different brain areas so they need a different rhythm of teaching and to respect this different rhythms is something essential in order to provide a significant learning for both, boys and girls.

Moreover, I've found a webpage (http://kidsrelaxation.com/uncategorized/lions-breath/) in which they suggest activities about emotional regulation, the explanation is really well done and most of them don't need any special material or space, I found it useful as usually the teachers don't have the material or the installations that they want and you have to fix it with the things you can.

References:

Bernstein, Elizabeth: The Friendship Bank: How and Why Even the Most Giving Friend Expects Payback. Seen from: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304713704579093141120660698

Lewis, C: http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10554-friendship-is-born-at-that-moment-when-one-person-says

Tv3: No em ratllis. Seen from: http://www.tv3.cat/videos/206039

LaPlante,  Logan: Hackschooling Makes Me Happy. Seen from TedxUniversityofNevada: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h11u3vtcpaY#t=300

Filella, Gemma; Ribes, Ramona; Soldevila, Anna: Una propuesta de contenidos para desarrollar la conciencia y la regulación emocional en la Educación Primaria

Rostan, Carles; Esteban, Moisés; Sidera, Francesc Sidera: Les emocions dels nens/es en edat escolar. From The magazine FEP.net 4. June 2007.

Issue 2.4: Peer interactions and group relations.

In this last topic of the second block we are going to talk about friendship. To describe those concepts first of all we are going to answer three questions:

Which are the main characteristics of the friendship?

Characteristic	Explanation
Based on reciprocity	The friendship is a relation based on done and receive, no one will be friend of somebody that treats him or her in a bad way, and at the same time we have to take care of our friends to make sure they are happy with us.
Voluntary and not obliged	Nobody is forced to become friend of another person but we do it based on a certain characteristics (we will see it in question 2). If a friendship relation is done by imposition then it doesn't work at all.
Based on the joy of being together	Those two people that become friends, did it because they find good things in the time that they spend together, they like each other and they can share things and experiences among them.
The balance cost-benefit uses to be positive	With all we have said before we can conclude that the relation causes good emotions and feelings to both kids that share it.
4-5 three out of four has a thigh relation with another child, and 3 out of 10 has more than one friend.	The capacity to relate between us is one of the basic skills we develop in order to communicate, that's why all the small kids seem to be all friends between them.

Who become friends? On what criteria?

There are three theories of selection criteria:

1. Thesis of the active selection: children select those than perceive as similar to them in the attributes important for each age fringe, for example toys preference, interests, etc. In this thesis children will chose the kid which whom he or she have more things in common, so for example in an early stage of life, the girls that tent to play with the kitchen, may end up being friends, because they have some things that link them together.

2. Thesis of the reciprocal socialization: here, the similarities are accentuated as a consequence of the reiterated interaction between them and they become more susceptibility to the mutual influence, this is the case of two kids that create a very strong attachment among them, if we separate them any time they seem like dying, and if once one of them criticizes the other, it can be seen like a catastrophe, because they are so linked together.

3. Thesis of the complementarily between both: in this thesis the relations are created, first by similarity criteria that promote personal attraction, and then, once friendship is more or less established, we find the process of reciprocal socialization that accentuate the similarities, so although the kids become friends in the same way, the strong or weak that this relation will be depend on the similarities they then find among them.

How is the interaction between friends?

The interactions are positive social interchanges, which means that the kids pay more attention to each other, they have an affective attachment, and they worry about the other, they also tent to cooperate more with their friends, because as they appreciate each other it gets easier to worry more about the group than just for oneself. In a friendship the people share help, comfort and more intense and emotional comprehension, because as they love each other, all this actions become easy suddenly. 

Finally they also has more strategies to solve the conflicts that they can create, although this conflicts will always be very small and silly ones.

Another similar concept is the peer group relation, which characteristics are: the regular interaction, meaning by that the well being between all the kids and the good communication among them. They also share behaviors, attitudes and values and has a pertinence feelings of being part of a group, all this elements create the feeling of friendship in a group, is a certain numbers of people with whom you can be who you are and you know they will still love you.

To sum up this chapter I think there is a sentence from C.S. Lewis that resume all the things that we have said about the friendship: "Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself..."". Based on this we can understand how important is for a child the relations he or she creates during their childhood, in a friend at this age, this kids may find comfort and wellness, but even even most important, they will feel like part of something, and this feeling in really important for them not to feel alone and left behind. That's why the relations are a basic fact that we have to care about, a child being alone in an early age may have lots of problems with socialization processes later on, so we need to find the way for this situation not to happen.

I had read this article, and I find interesting to put it here because it basically talks about how friendship is needed to be a bidirectional relation, and how if you give to somebody, when he or she gives to you back, the reward can be unbelievable nice. I felt really identified with a sentence that says Bonnie Le, a Ph.D candidate at the University of Toronto and lead researcher on the study: "Being a helpful person feels good and contributes to better relationships and greater satisfaction and self-worth".

The Friendship Bank: How and Why Even the Most Giving Friend Expects Payback (http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304713704579093141120660698)

And finally, the video we were asked to watch in class, which I found interesting and really funny, and remains me of when I was a child too: http://www.tv3.cat/videos/206039.

Issue 2.3: Self-Identity and Gender Identity Construction.

To talk about this issue we need, first of all to have clear the main concepts: 

- Self-concept: How do I see myself?

- Self-esteem: Do I like what I see from myself?

- Possible Self: How will I be? How should I be? How would I like to be?

- Identity: Different selves

Basically the self-concept is about the way you see, just being egocentric and without wondering of anything else "I look tall", the self-esteem appears when we compare ourselves with someone else "I look too tall", if you think about the "too" it's because you may have found that you are the tallest person of the class.

 

So basically the evolution of the selves in primary age is:

From	To
Simple and global	Differentiated and articulated
Arbitrary and changing	Coherent and stable
Concrete	Abstract
Absolute	Relative
External	Internal

Moreover, the self-stem affects our capacity to perform right, because if I think I'm not able to do it, I won't absolutely able to do it, but because I'm keeping myself from my abilities to work properly, and with all the skills that I could. On the other hand, if I trust myself and I think I'm capable to achieve that goal, I may perform better, because I know that I can do it.

In the second part, the gender identity construction talks basically bout the emotional learning related with the gender. It has been told many times that girls develop intellectually before the boys, moreover, when we went to a Primary Education school to talk about out topic for the research project which was basically the student's development in school when they are suffering a divorce situation at home, we found out that most of the teachers talked about girls performing so much better in this aspect, not only because we use to have more sensitivity, but because most of the times the emotional regulation is learned before, so girls know what and how they feel and this knowledge can help them to express themselves.

Issue 2.2: Emotional Development and Self- regulation.

This second part, which will work about the emotional development and the emotional regulation processes will be divided in two parts:

1. What are the main ontogenetic changes in the socio-affective dimension, of school-aged children?

2. How do social factors influence in the socio-affective development?

So to solve correctly the first question we will take a look in this table about the Emotional Development:

Age	Characteristics
8-10 months	Social Reference
2-3 years old	Emotional comprehension, emotional perspective, empathy and complex emotions
4-5 years old	Theory of mind - Recognize other’s mental state which are different from owns. - Same situation can have different meanings for different persons according to their previous mental states.
6-7 years old	Admit two ambivalent emotions consecutively
7-8 years old	Admit two ambivalent emotions simultaneously

I think it's very important to take into account this evolution when we will be teachers, because we cannot expect the same emotional regulation from one kid than from another. So a kid with between 2 and 3 years old may have problems at the beginning to recognize complex emotions, the main reason is that he or she may think he's feeling something (some simple emotion, live anger) and he may be feeling another one (jealousy). We need to teach those kids to understand the differences, to make sure they don't respond in the same way for both. In the same stage they start to develop the feeling of being able to understand another person feels, this is important as it's the first step to the self control and the regulation of actions.

During the 4 and the 5 years old appears the theory of mind, and it promotes basically two aspects: the first, a step further from the empathy, kids start being able to understand the other people's mental states; and second, they start reacting different to same situations, for example in from of the same comment a kid could get angry, and another one no.

Finally during the 6 and 7, and the 7 and the 8 years old they start being able to experiment two emotions, first in an ambivalent way (one after the other), for example when a kid it's humiliated and he first feel furious and then it decreases to anger; and later on to experiment them simultaneously, which means in the same way, as a kid is feeling surprised we might be happy too.

Another important development that happens trough those years if the development of the moral, which is basically divided in three parts:

- Pre-conventional moral: between 6 and 8 years old which understand the justice as unconditional

- Conventional moral: from 8 to 12 years old, understand justice as equality, maintaining law and order.

- Post-conventional moral: from 12 years old above, understand justice as equity, so in this stage acceptation is not only based in the common good, but in abstract moral principles.

So basically in the first one the first moral the kid is only looking for his or her own benefit, in this case to avoid punishment, in the second one he or she doesn't take part, because as equality means itself, it's not about the person but about the actions, and finally in the last stage the children develop opinion, and his or her position it's not based in his or her own benefit, but in abstract principles.

In the second part of this issue we find the factors that influence in the socio-affective development, and so the main important factor is the affective bond, which functions are to help through the process of adaptation and to give emotional security. So the person who cares about the affective bond has the task to care about the pupil in order to make him or her feel secure enough to explore, to adapt to the new live through the development. If a kid doesn't feel secure in the stage in which he or she is, then he might not try to achieve the next one. 

So we can find four types of attachment bond: 

Attachment	Characteristics
Secure attachment	- Trust in the efficacy and availability of the mother. - Democratic educative styles. - No need of constant contact, the security build in the relation allows/potentiates autonomy and trust.
Anxious-ambivalent attachment	- Incoherent attachment figures. - Emotionally unstable. - Generates anxiety for the fear of losing the relation. - Overprotective and/or permissive educative styles. - Difficulty to build up autonomy.
Evitative attachment	- Figures with difficulty to express affect. - Cold educative styles, oscillating between the authoritarianism and the abandonment. - Loneliness feelings, social isolation behaviors, distant relations with few intimacy.
Disorganised attachment	- Negligent attachment figures and/or psychical abuse. - Cycles of protection, refusal and aggression. - Bond and fear to the attachment figure. - Educative styles negligent or indifferent.

Basically only the first attachment, the secure one, accomplish with all the aspects that a relation kid-family should have. I think is important as a teacher to know all this theory in order to be able to deal with the familiar problems, or even worst, with the emotional and personal problems that a child has because of the family problems. The positive attachment, also makes possible the emotional regulation in an easier way, so we will have plenty more of facilities on the child regulation and most of the emotional problems will disappear.