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Although humans are inherently social beings, navigating the social world is not easy. Research has shown that individuals’ regulation of emotions, behaviour, and ways of thinking influences their success (e.g., Eisenberg et al., 2000). Over the years, interdisciplinary research fields investigating issues such as self-regulation, emotion regulation, and co-regulation have aimed to describe how the regulation of emotions, behaviour, and cognition is initiated and maintained. The concept of self-regulation refers to one’s ability to control and regulate emotions, behaviours, and thoughts in response to predefined goals (Forgas et al., 2009). Research has shown that emotions strongly affect self-regulatory processes by playing multiple roles according to the success or failure of self-regulation (Baumeister et al., 2007). Emotion regulation, thus, is seen as a specific component of the larger system of self-regulation (e.g., Calkins, 2010; Gagne et al., 2021; Tice & Bratslavsky, 2000). According to Gross (1998b), emotion regulation refers to “the processes by which individuals influence which emotions they have, when they have them, and how they experience and express these emotions” (p. 275). However, emotion regulation and self-regulation are also clearly visible during social situations where one’s functioning is influenced by their interaction with others, as well as the feedback that originates from the social environment. Therefore, the social context in which regulation occurs becomes important, as social interactions transform individual processes in self-regulation and emotion regulation into social dynamics of regulation (Lively & Weed, 2014). This type of regulation has led to the establishment of the field of co-regulation with a particular focus on interactions between adults and children, as children have limited capacity to regulate their emotions, behaviour, and thinking, and need support from their caregivers to stimulate their development of regulation skills. Co-regulation refers to “warm and responsive interactions [between a caregiver (i.e., parent, teacher) and a child] in which support, coaching, and modeling are provided to facilitate a child’s ability to understand, express, and modulate their thoughts, feelings, and behavior” (Murray et al., 2015, p. 3). Through co-regulated interactions, children internalise effective emotion regulation strategies and learn to understand, interpret, and respond to their own emotions and behaviours, as well as those of others (Paley & Hajal, 2022; Silkenbeumer et al., 2016). In this process, the parties involved affect and are affected by each other’s emotions and behaviour, as well as the surroundings (Buhler-Wassmann & Hibel, 2021; Lavelli et al., 2019; Lunkenheimer et al.,2017). Hence, children gradually shift from relying on others to developing the capability to manage and regulate emotions independently (Silkenbeumer et al., 2018).
The aim of this thesis is to develop a more profound understanding of co-regulation in parental and educational contexts as these two contexts have been shown to be important for children’s development and learning (e.g., Kiel et al., 2024; Vandenbroucke et al., 2017). Using the methods of video recordings and stimulated recall interviews, the thesis analyses situations in which spontaneous emotions arise in natural settings. More specifically, the thesis explores how co-regulation occurs in different caregiver–child relationships and further discusses how parent–child and teacher–child interactions might influence co-regulatory processes.
Three papers constitute this thesis. The first paper explores co-regulation in dyadic relationships between parents and their children through micro-analysis of video clips of well-functioning interactions. In Paper 2, the aim was to describe teachers’ foci of attention in emotional situations and how these influenced teachers’ responses to children. The method used was a video-based analysis of situations in classrooms where children had visible emotions. Paper 3 studied teachers’ interpretations of emotional situations in classrooms and how they explained their decision-making in these situations. Data collection for this paper was based on stimulated recall interviews.
Findings indicate that co-regulation in emotional situations can occur in different forms in caregiver–child relationships, depending on the contextual settings and the ways adults interact and respond to children’s signals and needs. In Paper 1, central processes that characterized co-regulation in relatively well-functioning interactions between parents and children were parents’ responses to initiative, negotiation, and parental attunement. In Paper 2, co-regulation emerged in classroom situations through teachers’ foci of attention on emotions, behaviour, and cognition. Lastly, in Paper 3, key mechanisms underlying co-regulation were revealed based on teachers’ knowledge of and relationships with the child, as well as the dilemma of where to focus their attention in emotional situations.
Overall, these findings highlight the essential role of adults in caregiver-child interactions, underscoring their responsibility as both providers and facilitators of co-regulatory processes. The findings also underline that co-regulation is a sensitive and dynamic process that unfolds through unpredictable patterns shaped by moment-to-moment interactions. Despite these constant changes, the findings stress the involvement of the ABC components (affect, behaviour, and cognition) in co-regulation, which offer a valuable framework for exploring co-regulatory processes in parent–child and teacher–child interactions. At the same time, analysis shows that there are personal limitations as well as structural constraints, particularly in schools, that can complicate and limit the possibilities for co-regulatory processes. In sum, the present thesis demonstrates that co-regulation is a sensitive, dynamic and context- and situation-dependent process, where consideration of the adult’s role as well as the ABC components is crucial for supporting children’s emotion regulation development in both parental and educational contexts.
