Abstract
This study investigated how teachers’ decision making regarding emotional support for elementary school students is
related to teacher efficacy and targeted skills that are emphasized by teachers for their students. This study surveyed teachers’ decision making on a virtual scene. Teachers were required to support a student’s negative emotion, to encourage students’ academic activities, and to consider both a student and near neighbor students, through a questionnaire for in-service elementary school teachers (n=344). Three types of decision making were generalized: 1) Emotion-related decision making, 2) Academic-related decision making, and 3) Relationship-related decision making.
Logistic regression analyses revealed that teachers who taught higher grades tended to adopt Relationship-related decision making rather than Emotion-related decision making. Additionally, it was possible that teachers who placed
emphasis on fostering students’ social skills tended to adopt Emotion-related decision making or Relationship-related
decision making, but not Academic-related decision making. Moreover, analyses indicated that teachers who placed
emphasis on promoting students’ academic skills tended to adopt Academic-related decision making, but not Emotion-related decision making. The results suggest that teachers need opportunities to discuss their educational
beliefs about emotional support in future teacher education forums.
