“Show Me How You Can Practice That”: Multimodal Socioemotional Instruction in a Dual Language Bilingual Education Preschool

Abstract

When providing socioemotional instruction to emergent bilingual children, preschool teachers are responsible for helping them navigate cultural and linguistic intersections of socioemotional learning. Teachers' multimodal practices may support that instruction, given that the children's socioemotional learning is an emotional, physical, and psychological endeavor. Through multimodality and communities of practice theoretical lenses, we investigate the multimodally supported socioemotional instructional practices of a dual language preschool educator. We employ CASEL's framework to identify socioemotional competencies as comprising self‐awareness, self‐management, social awareness, relationship skills, and responsible decision‐making. We coded and analyzed the teacher's socioemotional instruction and multimodal practices enacted in 18 video recordings of whole‐group learning activities. Analysis revealed that socioemotional instruction of the five socioemotional competencies occurred across learning activities and was inherently multimodal in nature, requiring the teachers' integration of verbal, visual, and actional (embodiment) modes to authentically represent and scaffold socioemotional skills.