Narrating teachers’ and parents’ educational practices to promote self-regulation in preadolescents: an exploratory research design

Abstract

This paper illustrates a qualitative research design for the study of the educational practices that teachers and parents employ with middle school students to help them learn how to manage their emotions and behavior. A phenomenological approach guides the heuristic steps and data have been gathered through 50 in-depth semi-structured interviews in order to obtain a faithful description of the phenomenon of inquiry from participants. A preliminary analysis of the interview transcripts shows that one of the educational practices employed by adults with preadolescents consists of the narration of their own past experience when they were the same age as them and that parents’ and teachers’ educational background is the touchstone for their educative actions.