This project was recruiting, but is now full. 

What’s involved?

Emotion Coaching (EC) is an approach that fosters teachers’ and early years staff’s warm and responsive relationships with children through self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances. and co-regulation of both children and adults. EC supports children to understand the different emotions they experience, why they occur and how to handle them.

This professional development programmeA programme is a package of support, including professional development, that helps early years educators to improve particular areas of practice and children’s outcomes. will involve 2 – 4 staff members (including one member of the senior team) per nursery setting. The staff members involved in the training should be working with 3 – 4‑year olds at the nursery. The training will involve:

• A 2‑day online training
• 3 x 2‑hour online follow-up workshops, held over three months
• A 45 minute practice accreditation discussion per setting with ECUK in March/​April

Practitioners who attend the training will be encouraged to share their learning with other staff members.

All staff working with 3 – 4 year olds will be encouraged to use EC in the nursery as part of their naturally occurring interactions with children.

Who can take part?

• Private, Voluntary and Independent (PVI) settings, maintained nursery schools as well as nursery classes in primary schools are all eligible.
• Settings must have a minimum of 17 children aged 3 or older in September 2024. Children must be enrolled to attend nursery for at least 10 hours a week.
• At least one member of the SLT must take part in the training.

Settings are not eligible if:

• They have received prior training of Emotion Coaching by ECUK or an ECUK Practitioner Trainer in the current year before starting the training. Participation in other training in EC (or other programmes such as Trauma Informed Approaches) will be assessed on an individual basis.
• They have signed up for another Stronger Practice Hub (SPH) funded programme that will be delivered in the 2024 – 2025 academic year, including settings that have been allocated to the comparison group for one of the other SPH trials (Early Talk Boost, The ONE Programme, Early Years Conversation Project, Concept Cat, Communication-Friendly Settings).
• They are participating in another EEF-funded evaluation in the early years or if they are participating in the DfE Early Years Professional Development ProgrammeA programme is a package of support, including professional development, that helps early years educators to improve particular areas of practice and children’s outcomes. during the year of evaluation delivery (2024−25).

To find out more go to: Early Years Emotion Coaching Project (emotioncoachinguk.com)

As part of the DfE COVID-19 education recovery initiative, Stronger Practice Hubs, the EEF is commissioning a number of research projects to evaluate the professional development programmesA programme is a package of support, including professional development, that helps early years educators to improve particular areas of practice and children’s outcomes. offered through the hubs.

Emotion Coaching (EC) was originally developed as a parenting style clinically observed in the USA, which supports children’s emotional self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances., social skills, physical health and academic success. EC has been adapted to be used within educational settings and widely delivered both independently and integrated within larger scale projects. Evaluations of related implementations show evidence of promise (see below), although, to date, no UK randomised controlled trialAn RCT is used evaluate an educational programme by assigning settings to one of two groups: the intervention group, who receive the programme or the control group, who continue with business as usual. This ensures that any differences in outcomes can be confidently attributed to the programme, providing a robust estimate of the impact and contributing to the evidence for what works in improving educational outcomes. (RCTAn RCT is used evaluate an educational programme by assigning settings to one of two groups: the intervention group, who receive the programme or the control group, who continue with business as usual. This ensures that any differences in outcomes can be confidently attributed to the programme, providing a robust estimate of the impact and contributing to the evidence for what works in improving educational outcomes.) has been conducted for this intervention.

A mixed-method pilot study in a rural disadvantaged area in England sought to evaluate the effectiveness of training practitioners to apply emotion coaching strategies in professional contexts, particularly during emotionally intensive and behavioural incidents. The study found a perceived reduction in staff’s emotion dismissing and increases in positive acknowledgement of children’s emotions, improved professional practice and adult self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances. and developments in children’s self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances. and behaviour. The research is the first pilot in the UK that builds on and complements similar work being undertaken in the USA and Australia.

Two mixed-methods studies (The Attachment Aware Schools Project with children aged 4 – 15, and The Alex Timpson Schools Programme with primary and secondary-aged pupils) highlighted the usefulness of EC as the universal provision supporting the needs of children in care, who may have attachment difficulties and/​or experienced early childhood trauma. Both projects highlighted: perceived increases in child wellbeing, a decrease in sanctions and exclusions, improved attendance, engagement and learning as well as self-reported increases in staff professional practice, improved confidence and efficacy to support vulnerable pupils and improved staff self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances..

This project will be evaluated by NatCen through a randomised controlled trialAn RCT is used evaluate an educational programme by assigning settings to one of two groups: the intervention group, who receive the programme or the control group, who continue with business as usual. This ensures that any differences in outcomes can be confidently attributed to the programme, providing a robust estimate of the impact and contributing to the evidence for what works in improving educational outcomes., randomised at nursery level. This means that settings that sign up are randomly assigned to one of two groups: the Emotion Coaching group, who implement the programme being tested; or the comparison group, where practice continues as normal. This is the best way to find out the impact of the programme being tested. As they do not receive the intervention, the comparison group receives a payment for taking part in testing.

The evaluation will be an efficacy trial, meaning it will assess the impact of Emotion Coaching on children’s self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances. over a five month period. An Implementation and Process evaluationAn IPE is used to understand how and why an intervention has (or has not) been successful. Data is analysed to explore programme quality, reach, adaptation and differentiation, as well as setting fidelity and responsiveness to the trial design. will be conducted alongside the Impact evaluation to explore how schools implement the programme and perceptions of Emotion Coaching.