Motivating feedback to give children a positive emotional experience

Source: China Education Daily

Teachers are not only caregivers and managers of children's lives, but also imparters of experience and ability, playing the role of authority and idol in the minds of children. Therefore, interaction is not only an important way for children and teachers to establish an intimate relationship, but also an important way to promote the development of children towards our expectations, and the quality of interaction directly affects the establishment of children's good personality and individual consciousness, and also directly affects the quality of education.

1. Reverse the doctor's mentality of "finding faults" among teachers

There is a child who doesn't like to eat black fungus since he was a child. After entering the nursery class, the parents reported this situation to the teacher, and the teacher learned about it and formulated a series of educational measures for the child to correct the picky eating habits, such as explaining the disadvantages of picky eating, rewarding small safflowers, and eating from a small bite to a large bite to a few more bites...... However, unexpectedly, after a year of "education", this child not only did not like the black fungus, but every morning at the kindergarten gate had to check the menu of the day in horror, if there was black fungus that day, he would cry heartbreakingly and not want to go to kindergarten.

This story gives us a lot to think about. An important reason for this phenomenon is that teachers understand teaching and educating people as "curing diseases and saving people", and not eating black fungus is a picky eater, and it must be "cured". In fact, many kindergarten teachers in the process of education will tighten the string of "education", in the face of children's behavior, always to correct the attitude and cure the mentality, do not raise your hand to speak is the problem to change, introverted personality is not lively enough to change, personality is too lively and quiet to change...... As a result, the focus of teacher-child interaction is to find problems and correct shortcomings.

Based on this phenomenon, the perspective of positive psychology may be able to change the minds of teachers. Positive psychology was founded by American psychologist Martin Seligman around 2000, and its core idea is to change the tendency of traditional psychology to focus too much on solving pathological problems, and focus more attention on improving the mental health and well-being of normal people, advocating positive evaluation and positive intervention. The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) published in February 2021 "What Schools and Teachers Can Do for Positive, High-Achieving Students" also clearly emphasizes that the positive social-emotional relationships between teachers and students, as well as the positive motivational feedback shown by teachers to students, can not only effectively improve students' emotional state, but also translate into their strong internal motivation, thereby significantly improving academic performance and overall ability.

In the field of preschool education, the concept of positive psychology is particularly relevant to the current needs. If we can apply the positive education concept of positive psychology in the interaction between teachers and children, and change the doctor's mentality that teachers are always "looking for faults", we may be able to effectively improve the quality of teacher-child interaction. So, we started to explore teacher-child interaction based on positive psychology. We hope to build a warm interaction, in which children can feel the transmission and experience of positive emotions, gain a sense of achievement, happiness, happiness and self-efficacy, and finally become independent, active and curious lifelong learners.

First, we identified the basis for the emergence of a new type of teacher-child interaction. We believe that teacher-child interaction should be based on careful observation, discovery and understanding of children's experiences constructed in various activities, and is a process of interpreting, clarifying and giving meaning to new information about children's growth. Secondly, teacher-child interaction is a vivid, lasting and comprehensive process of children's learning, and it is a process that encourages children to recognize their own changes and reflect on their own growth. Finally, teacher-child interaction must give children a positive emotional experience and give full play to their inner vitality. As a result, we have established a high-quality teacher-child interaction pathway, i.e., acceptance-recognition-motivational feedback.

2. Accept children's feelings

Acceptance refers to the interaction initiated by children or teachers, teachers should fully tolerate, understand and share children's emotional states, feelings or perspectives, and be able to experience children's emotions and experiences from the perspective of children, that is, what we call "seeing what children see" and "taking the ball thrown by children".

For example, on one occasion, when I was visiting a kindergarten with the principal and a few other managers, we came to a terrace and saw a few children happily building something. Seeing us coming, several children excitedly shouted to one of the directors: "Teacher, come and see, the warship we took today!" A toddler also ran over and tried to pull the teacher over to see, we smiled at her enviously, the teacher also smiled happily, but she didn't intend to walk over to admire, but suddenly touched the child's neck a little worriedly and said, "Oh, the sun is a little big, you seem to be sweating, do you want to take off your coat?" The toddler froze for a moment, then silently stroked his neck and walked back to the terrace.

It is because the teacher did not accept the children's current thoughts and thoughts, did not catch the children's "look at what we have set up" balls, but anxiously threw their own "sweaty and undressed" balls, which dissipated the children's good emotional experience. If teachers can accept and empathize, come to the construction area, listen to children's introductions with appreciative eyes, and meet children's emotional experiences before making their own suggestions, then the interaction will naturally move on to the next topic, and children will be more receptive to suggestions related to weather changes.

Therefore, back to the above case of "eating black fungus", it is also easy for us to understand why children hate and fear black fungus in the end, because "disliking black fungus" is not an accepted behavior, but is named a "picky eater". If the teacher can tell the children that they have something they don't like to eat, and at the same time, ask all the children to tell if there is anything they don't like to eat, then the child will find that everyone has a unique hobby, and everyone's differences are allowed. In such a state, even if the child eventually grows up, he will not like to eat black fungus, but he will never hate or fear black fungus. A black fungus reflects whether each unique child is accepted and tolerated.

3. Recognize young children's learning

Identification is a very important step in the interaction between teachers and children, which reflects the in-depth insight and understanding of children's individual needs, abilities and conditions.

Once, when four boys went to the puzzle area to play marble, they did not follow the rules of the game to "use chopsticks to pick up marbles", but piled marbles on the bottom of the bowl that had been turned over. When the pile is high, the marbles will fall and roll around, but the toddlers will laugh. At this time, how should the teacher come over and interact? Some teachers may point out the child's mistakes and guide the child to return to the correct way of playing. However, in our identification process, teachers are required not to find mistakes first, but to first dig out and discover where children's positive development is, and point to the development of children's multiple intelligences such as emotional intelligence, social adaptability and innovation ability at a deeper level.

For example, the teacher can be surprised and say, "What makes you so happy?" is an identification of a child's current interest in play. Teachers can also ask, "Have you invented a new way to play?" This is the teacher's identification of children's ability to innovate. This not only includes the "acceptance" of the previous step, but also allows the acceptance to accurately point to the interpretation of children's development, and this kind of positive and discovery interaction can trigger children's good social and emotional connections, and lay a solid foundation for children's subsequent active development.

4. Give motivating feedback to children

Feedback, also known as a "response", is the process of receiving and giving corresponding attention, understanding, or action in the course of behavioral or emotional communication. In what we call teacher-child interaction, feedback is a response based on the recognition of the child's development, and it is a link that strongly stimulates the child's inner vitality.

For example, in the above case of playing marble, the teacher can continue to give feedback: "Today, the teacher found that the four of you played very well, firstly because you worked well together, and secondly because you created a new way to play. At the end of the game, could you please introduce us to the new gameplay you have created, so that everyone can learn from it? However, if you can't play if the marble falls to the ground and escapes, can you figure out a way to prevent the marble from falling to the ground?"

Such feedback is motivating, pointing to children's self-esteem, self-love, self-realization, and encouraging children to continue to contribute. This kind of feedback can effectively improve children's positive emotions, enhance children's self-awareness and self-learning ability, and help cultivate children's good social communication skills and cultural identity.

To sum up, the teacher-child interaction based on motivational feedback, firstly, it changes the teacher's view of children and education, and the teacher believes that children have the internal driving force of self-construction and development potential, and agrees that education should conform to the natural growth law of children, and secondly, it emphasizes the cultivation of children's inner strength in life, promotes brain development, and promotes the development of children's cognitive, social and other abilities from the perspective of positive emotional development; finally, it will "believe that children are capable learners" This belief is translated into the actions of teachers, who shift the purpose of education from the traditional transfer of knowledge and skills to the care and promotion of children's feelings and experiences of well-being.

(The author's affiliation is the Preschool Education Guidance Center of Gongshu District, Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province)