The role of emotional knowledge in learning to teach: a framework for student teachers and their mentors on school placements

Pugh, Eamonn ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2687-1416 (2017) The role of emotional knowledge in learning to teach: a framework for student teachers and their mentors on school placements. Doctoral thesis, University of Cumbria (awarded by Lancaster University).

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Abstract

Emotional aspects of teaching impact on classroom relationships, as well as on teacher burnout and resilience. The research reported here contributes towards understanding emotional knowledge in initial teacher education. Using particularly Boyatzis and Goleman’s ideas of emotional competence, a four-quadrant framework was constructed, showing emotional knowledge as categories of self- and social awareness and self- and relationship management. This framework was tested in an inquiry to support student teachers during their work-based learning in classrooms. The research aimed to find the meanings attached to emotional knowledge by these student teachers and their school placement mentors. One hundred and nineteen student teachers following a primary postgraduate programme provided an opportunity sample of participants. After introduction to the framework, eighty-four completed an online survey, self-reporting both their emotional knowledge and their confidence in making those self-reports. Eleven agreed to provide written reflections during school placements, to participate in a focus group and be interviewed. Their mentors supplemented this with interviews and their written end-of-placement reports on the student teachers. In a mainly qualitative and interpretivist approach using thematic analysis, responses were coded using ATLAS.ti software and triangulated across data sets. This built a picture of how emotional knowledge was understood. The research found that student teachers used emotional knowledge in managing behaviour and building trusting and respectful relationships with mentors and pupils while participants experienced it as a developmental part of reflective practice. The findings were used alongside the ideas of dealing with emotions by transforming teacher knowledge and Zembylas’ concept of emotional ecologies, thereby developing a new theoretical framework for emotional knowledge. The main recommendation - that teacher educators prepare student teachers to explicitly recognise emotions and use emotional knowledge – has relevance to any work that involves dealing with emotions. The thesis also points towards empirical research into the re-theorised model.

Item Type:	Thesis/Dissertation (Doctoral)
Departments:	Academic Departments > Institute of Education (IOE) > Initial Teacher Education (ITE)
Depositing User:	Eamonn Pugh
Date Deposited:	29 Mar 2018 14:00
Last Modified:	12 Jan 2024 18:45
URI:	https://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/3729

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