There is a huge amount of research showing the positive association between children’s emotion regulation skills in tandem with their academic achievements (Schlesier et al., 2019), social functioning (Chervonsky & Hunt, 2019) and well-being (Benita et al., 2020). The capacity of regulating emotions is, however, limited in young children and thus must be learned and developed (Silkenbeumer et al., 2018). It is widely accepted in current literature that children need support and guidance in order to modify their emotion-related behaviours, various emotional experiences and display of emotions (Gross, 2014). By internalizing effective emotion regulation strategies, children develop their emotion regulation skills and gradually shift from a dependence on others to having the capacity to manage their emotions on their own (Feldman, 2007).

The concept of ‘co-regulation’ describes the interactive processes between adults and children in which children learn to regulate their emotions (Lobo & Lunkenheimer, 2020). This process involves affective, behavioural and cognitive components as these play a significant role in social learning (Gruber et al., 2022). The importance of this intricate and tripartite division is addressed in self-regulation theory as the ABCs of human functioning (Baumeister et al., 2002). For example, the definition of “self-regulation” depicts a person’s modulation of affect, behaviour, and cognition (Sitzmann & Ely, 2011). In line with this, it is reasonable to assume that the interactive effects of emotions, behaviour and cognition are substantial in school contexts where educational practices are exercised and learning occurs.

Much of the research on co-regulative processes has concentrated on the interactions between parent and child. For example, Feldman (2007) investigated parent-child synchrony in their interactions. However, current research emphasizes that teachers could play an important role in children’s development of emotional regulatory skills (Spilt et al., 2021). Teachers and children influence each other through their emotions and behaviours, which in turn makes them emotionally embedded in each other (Frenzel et al., 2021). In addition, teachers have daily interactions with the children and, given the significant amount of time they spend with children, teachers might become a significant other and thus function as a co-regulator (Buyse et al., 2011; Silkenbeumer et al., 2018; Stefan & Negrean, 2022). There is, however, a lack of research studying co-regulation in professional interactions (Spilt et al., 2021).

This study’s goals are to (1) observe and identify the central foci of teachers’ attention during spontaneous emotional situations in classrooms, and (2) analyse how these foci influence the teachers’ responses in their co-regulatory interactions with the child or children involved. The methodological point of departure is an explorative analysis of classroom situations in which children showed visible emotions. This approach enables researchers to capture the specificity and uniqueness of a given situation by emphasizing the nature of the spontaneity that exists in the recorded emotional situations (Creswell, 2020).

In this study, eight teachers participated while working at three different primary schools in southern Norway. Six of them were female and the mean length of the teachers’ working experience was 22 years. The teacher participants taught five different classes, each consisting of 12–24 children. The children were in first or second grade and were six to eight years old. The data material consisted of 103 hours of video recordings of daily classroom education and the average video-recording time per teacher was seven hours, varying over two to seven days. In addition to gathering video-recorded data material, the researcher took continuous notes during the video recordings of the classrooms. The video data material was obtained by two cameras. The first was a wide-angle camera placed high in a corner that was used to film the overall classroom activity. The second camera was at floor level and was controlled by the researcher in the classroom. Steering this camera provided the opportunity to focus and to zoom more closely in on any relevant situations that might arise, thus capturing relevant information in detail while also allowing the ability to review the situations repeatedly afterward. The teacher who was being recorded wore a microphone attached to the camera. The analysis was based on reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2022). First, the video recordings were carefully studied while considering the notes the researcher had taken while filming in the classroom. A provisional selection of the relevant video clips was performed during this phase. Second, initial codes were established by a deeper examination of the selected video clips, focusing on a wider contextual overview of situations of interest, including what had happened before and after the children’s emotional reactions. Third, the codes were further developed with the aim of generating initial themes. Fourth, the developing themes were closely reviewed according to the initial codes and the raw data material, thus preserving consistency during the procedure. And finally, the themes were organized and visualized in a thematic map to provide an overview for further revisions, modifications, and refinements of the central themes that characterized the data material. The analysis indicates that the teachers visibly focused on the children’s (1) emotions, (2) behaviour, and (3) academic issues.

Findings The teachers’ focus on the children’s emotions influenced their educational practice in the sense of validating the visible emotions, both physically and verbally. However, the data frequently showed that in such situations, the teachers’ educational practice also consisted of simultaneously looking around the classroom and checking on what the other children were doing. The teachers thus appeared to split their focus by addressing the emotions of the child involved while also supervising the class. In addition, the teachers quickly turned to general supportive statements such as “It’s okay” when addressing the children’s emotions. In these situations, although the children seemingly accepted these short statements, the analysis showed that they often returned to the same issues that had arisen in the emotional situations. The teachers’ focus on the children’s overt behaviour involved informing the children what was acceptable to say and do, without necessarily taking the children’s emotions into account. The analysis further showed that the children most likely acknowledged their teachers as decision-makers, since they frequently appeared to accept their decisions without expressing major frustrations. The teachers’ focus on the children’s academic issues influenced the teachers’ educational practice by addressing, helping, supporting, and motivating the children to solve academic tasks. However, the analysis showed that the teachers frequently tended to miss potentially or ongoing emotional situations in the classroom because they were preoccupied with teaching the entire class, a group of children, or an individual child in the classroom. Nevertheless, the children often sorted things out among themselves in emotional situations. Because this study has identified three specific foci of teachers’ attention during their co-regulative interactions with children, the perspectives on ABC might provide a framework that can highlight the potentials of future educational practice regarding the complex co-regulative processes during emotional interactions between teachers and children.

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