Date of Award

5-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelor of Arts (BA)

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Barton, Michelle

Area of Concentration

Psychology

Abstract

The current study included only well-established, high-fidelity Montessori programs to explore differences in children’s emotion regulation levels across varying preschool contexts (Montessori, traditional, and at-home/no preschool), the relationship between time spent in a Montessori program and emotion regulation, and the potential moderating role of preschool environment in the relationship between pretend play and emotion regulation. Seven parents of children enrolled in a Montessori program, seven parents of children enrolled in a traditional preschool program, and 21 parents of children not currently enrolled in preschool completed an online survey consisting of an emotion regulation scale, a pretend play scale, and demographic items. Participants were instructed to report emotion regulation skills and pretend play skills for their 4-year-old child. Due to the small and uneven sample sizes, descriptive statistics were used as the primary method of analysis. The results found that Montessori children appeared to have higher average levels of emotion regulation than traditional preschoolers, and that traditional preschoolers appeared to have better average emotion regulation than non-preschool attenders.

No clear relationship was found between time spent in a Montessori program and emotion regulation, though it’s possible that a relationship may emerge with a larger sample or at a later point in development. Relationships between pretend play and emotion regulation were absent across most play skills and preschool groups; though a negative trend was observed between toy character play and emotion regulation among reports for non-preschool attenders and opposite trends were found for the relationship between role play and emotion regulation among reports for traditional and Montessori preschoolers, which revealed negative and positive trends, respectively. These mixed results warrant continued research on the relationship between pretend play and emotion regulation across preschool contexts.

Rights

The author has granted New College of Florida the nonexclusive right to archive, make accessible, and distribute for educational purposes this work in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The copyright of this work remains with the author.

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