The teacher’s social and emotional competencies are linked to healthy student-teacher relationships which, in turn, create better student social, emotional and academic outcomes, including lower levels of ESL. Such competencies of the teacher can be acquired in pre-service or in-service teacher education.
Weissberg, R. P.
Bibliography
-
The importance of the social and emotional competencies of educational staff
-
Social and emotional learning as a tool for preventing ESL
Social and emotional learning plays an important role in preventing ESL through several mechanisms. When implemented in schools, social and emotional learning prevents ESL directly by promoting school connectedness, commitment and positive attitudes to school, teachers and peers and, indirectly, by enhancing educational success.
-
Team members’ and teachers’ understanding of their own unpleasant emotions in the process of teamwork or teaching
The Circular Emotional Reaction (CER) model helps teachers and other professionals working in schools understand their own unpleasant emotions they experience during teaching and teamwork. The knowledge about emotions helps them regulate their emotional reactions and establish better relationships with other professionals or students so as to prevent ESL.
-
Teachers’ professional development
The continuing professional development (CDP) of teachers is one of the most important approaches for preventing ESL. Improving educators’ competencies (e.g. communication, discipline management and cooperation competencies) implies improving students’ educational experience and reducing their risk for ESL. CPD should intertwine the different modes (e.g. study groups, self-reflection etc.) taking teachers’ motivation, interests and their stage of professional development into account.
-
Developing students’ emotional intelligence (EI) to help prevent ESL
Children and adolescents with better emotional skills have higher academic achievements and are less prone to ESL. Teachers can help students develop understanding, awareness and regulation of emotions from an early age. The theory and model of circular emotion reaction and the 5-step CER method can be used by teachers in this regard.
-
Preventing ESL by enhancing resiliency
Educational resilience is related to staying in school despite high risks (e.g. low social economic status, migrant status) present in one’s life and, as such, can offer a path for preventing ESL. Enhancing educational resilience is a result of fostering protective factor(s) on either the contextual (family, school, community, e.g. parental education trainings, positive school climate improvements…) or individual level (e.g. mind-set trainings).