Gulf Education and Social Policy Review

Published date: Sep 04 2025

Journal Title: Gulf Education and Social Policy Review

Issue title: Gulf Education and Social Policy Review (GESPR): Volume 6, Issue 2

Pages: 174 - 207

DOI: 10.18502/gespr.v6i2.14647

Priti Vermapverma@hct.ac.aeDepartment of Early Childhood Education, Faculty of Education, Higher Colleges of Technology, Sharjah

Aisha AlowaisEvaluation Department, Sharjah Private Education Authority, Sharjah

Jaana Seikkula-LeinoDepartment of Education, Faculty of Human Sciences, Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall

Self-regulation is a crucial skill for understanding child development, as it contributes to children’s competence, approach, persistence, and overall learning and achievement. We conducted a case study of early self-regulation in seven 3- to 4-year-old children at a nursery in the United Arab Emirates. In an earlier study, this nursery room received high-quality ratings based on an objective and well-established environmental rating scale. In this follow-up study, a new observational measure was used to assess young children’s self-regulation during authentic playful activities – the Preschool Situational Self-Regulation Toolkit (PRSIST) assessment. This assessment measures children’s overall self-regulation, including its cognitive and behavioral components. Capturing these children’s self-regulation aimed to evaluate their ability to manage cognitive and behavioral responses in authentic play-based contexts and to explore how these skills manifest in a high-quality early childhood education setting. The findings highlighted average to high levels of self-regulation among the children studied who were enrolled in this high-quality nursery. This research study contributes evidence to existing data, emphasizing the importance of addressing self-regulation development in early childhood education curricula to potentially enhance the holistic development of young children.

Keywords: Self-regulation, Behavioral self-regulation, Cognitive self-regulation, Early childhood education

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