Supporting Educators With OT Self-Regulation Resources for Kindergarten to Eighth-Grade Students to Increase Their Successful Participation in the Classroom

In public schools, children in grades K-8 depend on teachers to provide a learning environment that fits their sensory, emotional, and physical needs. Children are more likely to participate when they have the ability to create an environment that best fits those needs. Since participation is an indicator of occupational success, it is important that the classroom environment elicits engagement and participation from all students. Occupational therapists have the skills to offer children the tools they need to have autonomy over their self-regulation and the skills to educate teachers on how they can adjust their classroom environment to fit children’s needs. A descriptive study with educators in K-8 classrooms with at least five years of experiment as participants was conducted. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected to determine teacher 1) perception of classroom environment, 2) understanding of self-regulation, 3) knowledge of how those perceptions and understandings affect a student’s success through survey, interview, and observation. The results provided that teachers claim to understand self-regulation as it pertains to the classroom but do not have a complete understanding of self-regulation and how it affects a child’s behavior. Currently, most teachers are not educated on how to offer individualized self-regulation tools to their students and have poor understanding of how a dysregulated child may have little control over their behavior. Instead, educators are expected to deliver a generalized approach to classroom management which often proves ineffective. Therefore, there is a need for a collaborative approach to develop a self-regulation tool for children and educators to utilize in the classroom. Children should feel empowered to take control of their feelings through self-regulation and create an environment that will allow them to be successful through participation in school.

References

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