Giving Compass' Take:

• Research shows that specific teacher training and classroom management styles can help create more positive interactions with students and help them address their emotions.

• How can more nuanced training in social-emotional learning help both teachers and students have better interactions?

• Read about some more ways that teachers can instruct students on strong social and emotional skills.

Previous research has shown that children who can regulate emotion are more likely to be academically successful.

For the study, which appears in Prevention Science, researchers looked at more than 100 teachers and 1,817 students from kindergarten to third grade to see if teachers could support students’ emotional and behavioral growth through the Incredible Years Teacher Classroom Management Program.

The program uses videos and training sessions, along with role-playing and coaching, to help teachers learn proactive management strategies such as using behavior-specific praise, building positive relationships with students, and considering proximity to reduce disruptive behavior.

Teachers in the training group increased their positive interactions with students by 64 percent versus 53 percent for teachers in the control group without the training.

After one school year of implementing the program in classrooms, students had improved their social abilities and ability to regulate their emotions. These improvements resulted in an increase in student competence from the 50th to the 56th percentile for students in Incredible Years classrooms versus students in control classrooms.

“It shows that this classroom management approach can help mitigate risk for struggling learners early on, which could help prevent more intensive support needs in a child’s future,” Reinke says.

Read the full article about how teacher training helps students with emotions by Cailin Riley-Missouri at Futurity