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Independent EEF Evaluation of Emotion Coaching Published


We are delighted to share that the independent evaluation of Emotion Coaching in early years settings has now been published by the Education Endowment Foundation.

The programme was developed by Emotion Coaching UK and delivered in collaboration with Norland College. The evaluation was undertaken independently by the National Centre for Social Research—NatCen—with funding through the Department for Education’s Early Years Recovery Programme and the Education Endowment Foundation.

This is an important milestone for Emotion Coaching UK. It is the largest independent UK evaluation of Emotion Coaching undertaken to date and makes a valuable contribution to the growing evidence base surrounding emotionally responsive practice, co-regulation and children’s Personal, Social and Emotional Development.


About the evaluation

The randomised controlled trial involved 160 early years settings and more than 3,000 children.

In each intervention setting, a small group of practitioners—including a manager or senior leader—attended two days of online Emotion Coaching training followed by three practice and implementation workshops. They then shared the approach with colleagues and supported its use across their wider setting.

The main implementation period was seven months.


What did the evaluation find?

The overall pattern of findings was encouraging, while also highlighting the complexity of measuring changes in children’s self-regulation over a relatively short period.

The evaluation found:

·      a small positive average impact on children’s self-regulation, based on practitioner reports;

·      a small positive average impact on children’s prosocial behaviour; and

·      a moderate positive effect on practitioners’ meta-emotion philosophy.

The effect on practitioners was statistically significant. Practitioners became more Emotion Coaching and less Emotion Dismissing in the ways they understood and responded to emotions.

This is an important finding because Emotion Coaching is an adult-mediated approach. Change begins with how adults notice, understand and respond to children’s emotions during everyday interactions.

The average findings for children’s self-regulation and prosocial behaviour were positive but statistically uncertain. This means that, although children in the Emotion Coaching settings had better average outcomes, the evaluation could not establish with certainty that these differences were caused by the programme.

Statistical uncertainty does not mean that the programme had no effect. It means that the evidence was not sufficiently precise to rule out the possibility that the differences occurred by chance.


What practitioners reported

The Implementation and Process Evaluation provided further insight into how Emotion Coaching was experienced in practice.

Practitioners described becoming more aware of children’s emotions, more reflective in their responses and more confident in supporting children’s Personal, Social and Emotional Development.

They also reported that children were:

·      more willing to talk about their feelings;

·      more likely to seek adult support to calm;

·      taking less time to settle when dysregulated;

·      experiencing fewer escalations in behaviour; and

·      becoming more confident in expressing their needs.

Some of these changes—particularly seeking adult support for co-regulation and taking less time to calm—were not directly captured by the self-regulation measure used in the trial.

Implementation also varied between settings. Leadership engagement, staffing pressures, competing demands and the timing and reach of the cascading process all influenced how fully Emotion Coaching became embedded.

The seven-month implementation period may therefore have been too short for changes in adult practice to translate fully into larger and more reliably detected outcomes for children.


Recognised as an EEF Promising Programme

Following the evaluation, Emotion Coaching has been recognised as an EEF Promising Programme.

Promising Programmes are approaches that have demonstrated positive outcomes through a sufficiently secure evaluation, have been well received and implemented, are cost-effective and are currently available to settings.

For Emotion Coaching UK, this is a meaningful recognition of the positive direction of the child outcomes, the significant practitioner finding, the quality of the evidence and the positive experiences reported by practitioners.


What have we learned?

The evaluation has not changed the principles of Emotion Coaching. It has strengthened our understanding of how settings can be supported to implement those principles successfully and consistently.

We have always believed that training is the beginning of implementation rather than the end. Practitioners need opportunities to practise, reflect, learn together and consider how Emotion Coaching can become embedded within the wider culture of their setting.

We are now using the findings to strengthen our support for Emotion Coaching Leads, leadership engagement, cascading, communities of practice, implementation guidance and tools for monitoring consistency and quality.


We would like to thank all the settings, practitioners, children, families and project partners who contributed to this important evaluation.

The findings provide a strong and encouraging foundation from which to continue developing Emotion Coaching in early years settings.


Read the evaluation

The full evaluation report, EEF project page and accompanying press release are available through the Education Endowment Foundation.

EEF Promising Programmes page:Emotion Coaching | EEF

Over the coming weeks, we will share further information about the findings, what Promising Programme recognition means and what we have learned about supporting implementation.



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