Temperament, Self-Regulation, and Education

In recent years, advances in the study of temperament have identified a short list of temperament dimensions. These include positive emotionality/approach, fear, irritability/frustration, attentional persistence and activity level. In this article, we review research on the first four of these dimensions, briefly linking them to underlying biological systems. We then apply our knowledge of temperament to teachers' approaches to children's mastery motivation, fear of novelty, and ego based anxiety. We argue that educators' training should include a basic understanding of the development of temperament as well as methods for assessing individual differences in children's emotional reactivity and attentional self-regulation.