The emotional component of teaching : areflective training experience with teachers

The system of relationships and emotions that develop in the teaching-learningprocess define the complexity of teachers' education and pose the challenge ofbringing out the emotional and affective culture that guides school life. Severalstudies on teaching practices highlight the tendency to refer to technical aspectsas a key dimension of professionalism, rather than on relational and emotionaldimensions that can promote the relationship with student. The creative andunprecedented reconfiguration of professional practice is configured as theoutcome of a reflexive process of subjective construction and de-construction ofthe profession and its development.

The paper proposes a reflective training experience, which involved 76 teachers,focused on emotional and relational dimensions on teaching and based on theuse of the narrative-autobiographical instruments (diary, narrative, metaphor).The results achieved in the monitoring phase show that the training offered anopportunity to reflect on oneself and one's personal and professional experience,starting from the use of alternative perspectives and interpretations than thosethat are already in use. [Publisher's text]