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Abstract: 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 selfregulation.
Recent increases in our understanding of temperament have created new ways for approaching the education of the child. These approaches allow us to appreciate the ways in which children differ from another, and the positive contributions of this variability to the classroom and society. In this article, we begin with some introductory remarks on temperament and schooling. We then review results of studies identifying basic dimensions of temperament that can affect children's exploration, discovery, and learning as well as their discouragement, anger, and avoidance of potential sources of knowledge. We describe the structure of temperament as it has emerged from research during the past two decades, briefly linking this structure to theories of underlying biological systems. The structure of temperament that has emerged includes individual tendencies toward fear, anger/frustration, positive affect and approach, activity level, and effortful or executive attention. These emotional, energetic, and attentional systems have been conserved in evolution and are associated in theories of temperament with underlying neural networks and neurotransmitter activity.
We consider implications of individual variability in these tendencies for the child's experiences in school. We discuss ways in which mastery motivation may be related to children's fear and avoidant tendencies, approach, and effortful control of emotion and action. Finally, we review implications of a temperamental understanding of children for the training of educators and the assessment of children.
Temperament and Schooling
In theories of temperament, early individual differences in emotionality, activity level, and attention are seen as based on a set of brain systems underlying children's reactivity and selfregulation (Rothbart, Derryberry, & Posner, 1994). When there is variability in the sensitivity of these systems, the same stimulus...