Policy makers have emphasized the importance to integrate emotion regulation in the curriculum (OECD, 2017; Singh & Duraiappah, 2020). This is because emotion regulation capacities develop across adolescence. Adolescence is a time in life marked by considerable emotional, social, and cognitive challenges, such as academic pressures and forming peer and romantic relationships, that may pose significant stress (Berk, 2014). The capacity to regulate stress and negative emotions is particularly important to manage emotional experiences during adolescence. Emotion regulation refers to a person’s insight in how to cope with emotions and how to express them. Effective emotion regulation has been linked to healthy functioning (e.g., higher stress resilience, problem-solving, social functioning), whereas ineffective emotion regulation produces maladaptive outcomes (e.g., higher stress reactivity and slower recovery) (Marroquín, Tennen, & Stanton, 2017).  Indeed, within the school context, emotion regulation may aid or hamper adolescents’ learning processes, student engagement, and academic performance (Jacobs & Gross, 2014).

Some existing integrative school programs targeting students’ social and emotional learning have integrated components of emotion regulation (such as self-awareness; the abilities to understand one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts). These programs have shown positive effects on for instance prosocial behavior, school bonding, connectedness, belonging, and emotional distress (Taylor, Oberle, Durlak, & Weissberg, 2017). Despite these important efforts, much remains unknown about how various key facets of emotion regulation (e.g., emotional awareness, access to emotion regulation strategies) connect to central processes in academic achievement, including motivation and engagement of students to learn. Yet, this knowledge seems particularly important to translate policy recommendations to specific learning objectives to facilitate effective emotion regulation and resilience both within and outside the classroom.

To address this gap, this study examined complex relationships between emotion regulation and key socio-emotional processes that play out within the daily classroom. Emotion regulation is a multifaceted construct (Gratz & Roemer, 2004), consisting of awareness and understanding of emotions, acceptance of emotional responses, the ability to control impulses, and access to emotion regulation strategies that are perceived to be effective for feeling better. Each of these facets may help to understand socio-emotional processes within classroom contexts. One particularly important factor may be students’ relation with their peers and the teacher. Previous research, has revealed that when students have positive relationships with their peers they tend to be more engaged and perform well in school. Also the relations with teachers and the support students experience from them plays a role in students’ engagement in learning (Furrer & Skinner, 2003; Roorda, Koomen, Spilt, & Oort, 2010). Teachers who succeed to develop relationships with students are emotionally available, provide help when students need it and are caring (Wentzel, 2009).

This study applied an innovative network approach to uncover complex mutual relations among emotion regulation facets, teacher and peer relationships, and student engagement. This comprehensive data-driven approach enables novel insights into how emotion regulation facets connect to socio-emotional classroom processes, as such informing policy recommendations and school-based interventions targeting emotion regulation.

Data were collected in 6 Flemish (Belgium) secondary schools. Four schools were located in an urban environment and two schools were located in a semi-dense environment. Three of the schools located in an urban environment had a high percentage (60% or more) of students from a low SES background. The three other schools had a low percentage (20% or less) of students from a low SES background. A total of 136 students (M = 14.93, SD = 1.016, range: 13-18) filled out the questionnaire. The sample included 59.7% female and 38.1% male respondents (2.2% of the participants preferred not to mention their gender or did not answered this question). This study ran from September until November 2020. During this period, the Belgian government issued various regulations within the school context to stop the spread of the coronavirus. This context increases the importance of this study on emotion regulation within the classroom because quarantine and online learning may impose challenges to emotional and social functioning (Magson et al., 2020). Five broad facets of emotion regulation were measured using the subscales of the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation scale (Kaufman et al., 2016), namely awareness of emotions, lack of emotional clarity (difficulties in understanding and describing emotions), nonacceptance of emotional responses, impulse control difficulties, and limited access to strategies to regulate emotional responses. The relationship with the teacher was measured with the supportive environment scale of the Adolescent Resilience Questionnaire (Gartland, Bond, Olsson, Buzwell, & Sawyer, 2011). Peer relations in the classroom were measured using a scale used in prior work (Mikami, Boucher, & Humphreys, 2005). Finally, student engagement was measured using the scales of behavioral and emotional engagement (Skinner, Kindermann, & Furrer, 2009). Psychological network modeling, which is a state-of-the-art research quantitative method (Borsboom & Cramer, 2013), was applied to map interactions between emotion regulation facets, teacher and peer relations, and both emotional and behavioral student engagement. Psychological networks are abstract models consisting of a set of nodes that represent the study variables and a set of edges that represent statistical relationships between the nodes. The network was estimated via Gaussian Graphical Models (GGM) and regularized using a graphical least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (glasso) algorithm to return a parsimonious network.

The network structure revealed that nodes representing emotional and behavioral student engagement were strongly connected. Likewise, the five facets of emotion regulations showed strong interrelations. Interestingly, the emotion regulation facets had direct relations with student engagement as well as indirect relations via peer and teacher relationships. As for direct relationships, the network showed that limited access to emotion regulation strategies was negatively associated with emotional engagement, whereas emotional awareness was positively associated with both emotional and behavioral engagement. As for indirect relations, nonacceptance of emotional responses was negatively associated with peer relations, which was in turn positively related to emotional engagement. Likewise, impulse control difficulties were negatively associated with support from teachers, which was in turn positively related to emotional and behavioral engagement. Finally, emotional awareness was positively associated with support from teacher, which connected to both aspects of student engagement. Moreover, the psychological network revealed that limited access to emotion regulation strategies together with both emotional and behavioral engagement were the most important nodes in the network. This was evidenced by their many and strong relations (edges) with other nodes in the network. Together, these results indicate the emotion regulation facets play a critical role with the classroom context. Facets such as limited access to emotion regulation strategies, nonacceptance of emotional responses, and emotional awareness may be of particular importance to understand student engagement and relations within the classroom (with teachers and peers). These findings suggest that school-based interventions targeting emotion regulation should specifically focus on increasing emotional awareness and acceptance of emotional responses. Also broadening students’ emotion regulation strategy use with the aim to improve student engagement and relationships with peers and teachers in the classroom are potential targets for school-based interventions.

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