Emotion regulation in primary school children: A systematic review. (May 2019) - Schlesier, Juliane
Abstract: In the last decade, much research has focused on children's 'emotion regulation' (ER) in school contexts. This has resulted in a wealth of studies – a collection that has not been systematized until now. In pursuing this goal, the present systematic review has generated a total of 2, 617 results from 18 relevant databases, reflecting a detailed research literature review of the publishing peak years from 2011 until 2016. After reviewing the abstracts and conducting a full publication screening within a PICO table, 14 studies remained. The results of the evidence-based quality assessment show that the effects of school intervention programs on children's ER are rarely reported. It turns out that teacher-student-interaction is important, so it should be improved and integrated into intervention programs in order to subsequently examine their effectiveness. Highlights: Research on children's ER in primary school context can be divided into three types: long-term, cross-sectional and intervention studies. Children's use of ER strategies changes during primary school years. Certain variables, such as achievement emotions, academic engagement and achievement, correlate significantly with ER. Teacher-child-interaction plays a significant, important role for children's ER abilities. Evident studies on ER interventions in primary school rarely measure their effects on children's ER skills.