The (un)presence of emotions in teacher education. A critical analysis of the academic curriculum discourse in Poland

Abstract

Emotions are an important aspect of teachers’ professional work, and therefore, developing their emotional competences is an important element of teacher training. The aim of the article is to answer the question whether, in the process of preparing teachers to perform their professional role, attention is paid to issues related to the emotions. The theoretical perspective of our research is provided by the socio-constructivist concepts of emotions and emotional competences. We refer primarily to the theories of Steven Gordon and Carolyn Saarni. The research problem focuses on the question: how are the emotional competences of teachers constructed/presented in the academic education curriculum in Poland? We searched for an answer to the problem by means of critical discourse analysis (CDA), which is one of the most useful research perspectives for studying the relationship between socio-cultural and discursive changes. The source of discursive data is the document that constitutes the legal basis regulating the teacher education process in Poland, i.e. Regulation of the Minister of Science and Higher Education. Our research revealed that in Polish academic education there is a technical-instrumental discourse in force, which is related to the traditional model of teacher training. This has a decisive impact on both the structure of the teacher training curriculum in Poland and the marginal importance of the role of emotions in teachers’ work. The performed analysis may contribute to the improvement of educational practice and, consequently, to the improvement of the quality of academic education.