A study carried out by researchers from the University of Córdoba (UCO) and the University of Helsinki (Finland), with the involvement of more than 3,500 Secondary Education students Compulsory (ESO) and 294 teachers, has revealed that the teachers’ commitment to … Inclusive education promotes the socio-emotional skills of its students.
As reported by the UCO in a note, socio-emotional competencies are the set of knowledgeskills and attitudes that favor the development of positive interpersonal relationships and adequate management of emotions in various contexts, which are associated with academic success and are also a protective factor against ‘bullying’ and other antisocial behaviors.
In this scenario, the Department of Education researchers from the UCO Vicente Llorent and Mariano Núñez Flores, and the researcher from the University of Helsinki Markus Kaakinen, wanted to “know if the inclusive education of teachers is related to the socio-emotional competencies of their students.”
Inclusive education is a pedagogical approach based on the basic right to a joint education of all students, regardless of the personal, cultural, social conditions or for presenting some type of educational need. Furthermore, education inclusive does not focus on minorities or specific groups of students, but is rather articulated in the recognition and comprehensive response to the idiosyncrasies of all students.
To know the role of teachers in the socio-emotional development of their students, the researchers They launched the most comprehensive study to date in this area: 3,550 students and 294 teachers from 40 educational centers, grouped in 174 ESO classrooms in Córdoba capital and province.
Psychosocial behavior
Thus, as Llorente explained, «we ask the teachers through a questionnaire on inclusive education what attitudes they have”, because “it is important to know if they think it is positive or not; how they develop it in the classroom, and how the educational center is organized, if they organize collectively towards inclusive education.”
Crossing these data with the level of socio-emotional competencies of the students in the dimensions of self-awareness, self-management and self-motivation, social awareness and prosocial behaviorand responsible decision making, obtained the answer: there is a positive relationship between teachers being inclusive and students having socio-emotional competencies.
That is to say, “the more inclusive education we find the more socio-emotional competencies, and that invites us to think that if the teachers develop inclusive education, the students will have more socio-emotional competencies which, in turn, are related to the prevention of antisocial behavior.” , As the ‘bullying’he ‘cyberbullying‘, cyber-hate and cyber-violence in relationships, which can be prevented if students have socio-emotional skills,’ according to the researcher.
The study reveals the determining role of teachers in the task of increasing the socio-emotional competencies of its students through its commitment to inclusive education in its classes, with the educational center being a key factor.
Vision of the student and the teacher
The novelty of this study, beyond being the first so specialized and “with excellent dimensions of participation”, is its multi-informant nature: “we have what the teachers say and what the students say, we have the two visions and we combine them, that is a strong point, which makes the study more complex at a statistical level,” according to researcher Mariano Núñez Flores.
Teachers who opt for inclusive education in their teaching programming will know that their students could have more socio-emotional skills, thanks to this team that is now seeking to know if this effect continues in the long term.
This study has been developed from the Education Research Laboratory (Liedu, SEJ-664) of the UCO thanks to three R&D&I projects: ‘The role of teachers as a protective factor against cyber-hate, cyberbullying and cyber violence in dating in secondary education students’, (P20_00526) financed by the Junta de Andalucía; ‘School bullying as a determinant of drug use: A longitudinal study of risk and protective factors’ (2019/016), funded by the Government of Spainand ‘Evolutionary change and interaction between online and offline antisocial behavior, its risk and protective factors throughout adolescence’ (PID 2019-109770RB-I00), funded by the Government of Spain.
