Case Material for Developing Professional Emotional Competencies in Teacher Education

Design, Testing and Classification of Experience-Based Text Vignettes

Abstract

The theoretical prosocial classroom model underlines the relevance of emotional competencies as a significant resource for school success and well-being. Therefore, pre-service teachers should be supported in the development of appropriate competencies. Working with text vignettes can be an effective method for professionalizing pre-service teachers. However, only a few studies investigate the emotion evoking significance of text case material for professionalization purposes. For that reason, case materials for teaching education in form of experience-based text vignettes that address the issue of handling heterogeneity in pedagogical settings were developed. Those are based on real student teachers’ descriptions of their own observations. This paper investigates students’ emotional experience with a total of 99 such text vignettes, selected on basis of criteria. From two samples of pre-service teachers (study 1: n = 364; study 2: n = 304), the text vignettes were rated based on the emotions evoked. The resulting cluster analysis shows that the vignettes can be grouped into three homogeneous clusters: positively valenced vignettes, negatively valenced vignettes and neutral experience vignettes. Finally, the results regarding the development of emotional competencies in teacher education using text cases are discussed. The text concludes with an overview of planned research.