TRAINING ON EMOTIONAL SKILLS IN SPECIAL EDUCATION TEACHERS THROUGH MINDFULNESS: AN EXPLORATORY STUDY

Abstract

Emotional competence has a strong relationship with people’s well-being and their effectiveness in personal and professional life and is one of the major factors affecting the effectiveness of teaching and learning processes. This element acquires even greater importance in creating an inclusive educational environment that requires teachers to exercise emotional skills to facilitate inclusion, focusing on acceptance, dialogue, attention and listening. All teachers should have a good level of emotional competencies and even more special education teachers. They play an important role in developing students’ skills related to independency and interaction with people, besides having a mediation role among all actors in the context. Teachers need to pay particular attention to this aspect, as the relationship is the level on which the effectiveness of educational processes is played (D’Alonzo, 2015). Although awareness is high on these issues, even today, the training offered to teachers pays little attention to transversal skills, in particular, to emotional skills. This contribution shows the results of a training protocol on the emotional skills of a sample of students during a course in Special Education Teachers. The protocol based on the principles of mindfulness has been integrated into the teachers' specialization course. To measure the effectiveness of the protocol Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Emotion Regulation Skills Questionnaire (ERSQ), Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) and Teachers’ Sense of Self-Efficacy Scale (TSES) were administrated to the sample of students. Findings provide evidence that training on emotional competence, based on mindfulness practice, can positively affect some of the skills related to emotion regulation.