ABSTRACT
The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (2015) posits that positive lifetime outcomes rely on the acquisition of a balance of cognitive, social and emotional skills during childhood, while securing emotional skills, along with social skills, has been shown to correlate positively with academic achievement (Durlak, Weissberg, Dymnicki, Taylor, & Schellinger, 2011; Gutman & Schoon, 2013). Further research on young children's emotional development and experiences emphasizes that their emotional competencies are ‘critical aspects of the development of overall brain architecture, and that it has enormous consequences over the course of a lifetime’ (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2011, p. 1) and ‘critical for children's success in school, as well as in other settings and in later phases of life into adulthood’ (Darling-Churchill & Lippman, 2016, p. 2). Among researchers in the field of early childhood education and care, there is a growing acknowledgement of the importance of emotional development in children's overall well-being and how it affects young children's lives on multiple domains of their development as well as their ability to form and sustain secure and successful relationships through life (Bowlby, 1988; Denham, Bassett, Brown, Way, & Steed, 2015; Dowling, 2010; Dunn, 1993; Gerhardt, 2014; Thompson & Lagattuta, 2006). Evidence from extant research therefore suggests that positive emotional experiences in early childhood may provide an important foundation for a fulfilling life.
