EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF DEVELOPING SOCIO-EMOTIONAL COMPETENCE AMONG TEACHERS. AN EMPIRICAL RESEARCH

The teacher’s social-emotional competence is a fundamental coordinate across the student’s educational path, where it leaves a specific mark. The teacher who possesses this competence has an increased level of social awareness, uses conflict mitigation strategies, manages to motivate students to learn, and translates positive emotions such as enthusiasm and joy into the classroom. Within the present study, we use the Salovey-Mayer model as a starting point, where the personal emotional awareness leads to emotional regulation (ER) which enables personality development at an optimal level. Our aim was to test the relationship between the social-emotional competence, understood as emotional regulation (ER), and the acceptance of others (AO). To identify the existing differences between the discussed parameters, the study also included variables such as teacher gender. The type of relationship between ER and AO was explained by means of simple linear regressions; correlation analyses were conducted to investigate the strength of the relationship. The data were collected through an online survey completed by 121 respondents (M = 40.52, SD = 8.08), primary and secondary teachers. The results showed that there is a statistically significant relationship between AO and ER (r =.30, p < .001), between AO and expressive suppression (r = .40, p < .001), and a lack of one between AC and cognitive reappraisal (r = -.12, p =.175). Statistically, there were no significant differences between female and male teachers’ responses. The results of the study have an impact on the psychosocial climate of the classroom, the teaching-learning-evaluation process, the students’ academic results and teacher-student relationship.