Developing teachers' social and emotional competence: a humanistic psychology perspective

Abstract

The social and emotional competences of teachers have a notable influence on the type of teaching that is carried out and on the type of relationships that are built in the classroom. Training teachers in personal aspects is a current urging need. Since the end of the last century there have a great deal of enriching research, courses and publications on teachers' emotional and social intelligence. From the point of view of training, this article presents some limitations of certain emerging proposals. Next, an alternative is proposed, based on the principles of humanistic psychology and promoting the development of five attitudes directly related to the teacher's emotional and social competence: phenomenological disposition, autonomy, responsibility, criteria independence and cooperative disposition. Finally, some the possible shortcomings and negative aspects of the proposed model are discussed, highlighting the need to further investigate the efficiency and relevance of training proposals such as the one presented here in order to increase their social impact.

Keywords

• Humanistic psychology
• Social competence
• Emotional competence
• Teacher training
• Teachers