A teacher training program in emotional skills for university teaching staff

Abstract

Referred to the European High Studies Convergence pretended by the Spanish university and named Bologna, an 8-to-12-hour-long course type for university teachers and professors developed between 2003 and 2013 is presented. This kind of continuous training was born in the Zaragoza’s University Science Institute for Education during years 2003 and 2004 and it has been given in many Spanish Universities such as Cataluña, País Vasco, Galicia, Murcia, Madrid and Aragon. An amount of 753 university teachers and professors has attended to this intensive course coming from every scientific speciality. This kind of course has been organized into seven units where we put into practice every emotional thinking method competence. The first one develops the teacher’s self-knowledge as a beginning for the emotional thinking method. The second one helps the teachers to develop their self-esteem, an emotional competence very important for teachers. The third one helps to increase the teachers’ self-control, as much the physical self-control as the mental self-control. The fourth one explains how to increase teachers’ and students’ motivation and it focuses about how university teachers and professors can build their own personal, professional and searching project. The fifth one shows the importance that the others’ knowledge, such as students or others teachers and professors, has on the academic education. In this part, the method insists on how to improve the whole communication skills, body and verbal communication. The sixth one refers to the empathy and how to grow it. In this part, teachers learn how to value their students as future professionals, social workers or scientists. Finally, the seventh unit helps to develop teachers’ leadership and they learn how to take control over the class and how to increase the students’ implication and motivation for their learning. We cannot use old-fashioned ways when we use this new method, thus in this article the author presents a new teaching methodology named “emotional dramatization”. This is the result of the addition of emotional intelligence and theatre skills. At the end, the article shows a new point of view on how to give a conference in a Congress or a Workshop named “particonference” based on emotional intelligence and group dynamics. That way, the relationship between the speaker and the audience is smoothed, and so is the relationship among the attending people. Therefore motivation, learning and comprehension are increased further than in usual conferences. This kind of formation course has been always evaluated in a positive way including 7,65-to-9,57-point marks. A qualitative evaluation, an exercises set and an actualized bibliography are added too.