Foregrounding Emotional Imagination in Everyday Preschool Practices to Support Emotion Regulation

A great deal has been written about children’s learning and development as a result of their experiences in preschools, where both teacher planned and self-directed exploration by the child is possible. However, less is understood about how everyday preschool practices and the corresponding self-directed activities of children contribute to the emotional development of young children. Mostly what is known about the emotional development of the preschool child has been gained through intervention studies, rather than through naturalistic research of everyday preschool practices. The aim of this chapter is to examine how everyday interactions in a preschool environment can contribute to the emotional development of young preschool children. Specifically, the study sought to find out what kinds of conditions support children’s emotional development when engaged in self-directed activities where teachers and other children spontaneously respond to the dramatic moments found in everyday play practices. Using the concept of perezhivanie to capture in unity the everyday practices of preschools and the moments of children’s self-directed activity, this chapter theorises emotion regulation as part of everyday practices where children become more consciously aware of self and the environment.The concepts of a two-positional perspective and emotional imagination are introduced to explain those dramatic events (emotionally imaginative situations)that emerged spontaneously and which were found to contribute to emotion regulation during children’s self-directed activity.