Emotional agency in teacher education

Teacher educators' emotional agency and interaction skills in digital environments (TOVE)

The TOVE project focuses on research-based development of content and methods to strengthen teacher educators' emotional and interaction skills and competence in digital environments.

Background

Understanding the emotional, social, and cognitive dimensions of interaction is crucial for for teacher educators to be able to design, guide, and evaluate interaction and participation in learning contexts.

Interpersonal competence and interaction skills are intertwined with emotional agency: the ability to recognize and understand emotions and their value in supporting learning communities and creating shared expertise. They also contribute to teachers' and students' well-being.

Digital environments for learning and working create specific challenges for interaction, participation, and sense of presence. Teacher educators' skills and capabilities to support interaction and learning communities in the digital are diverse. Research indicates that both teachers and students feel strained and isolated.

The goals of the TOVE-project are the following

To research and develop emotional and interaction competence in digital environments, through integration of research-based knowledge and practice from universities and vocational teacher education and the results from earlier projects funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture.

•     To build a model for the development of emotional and interactional skills in digital environments (online environments including extended reality environments).
• To promote and expand emotional and interaction skills that contribute to the well-being of teacher educators and students in digital environments; designing, guiding, evaluating, and providing feedback (social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions).
• To create tools and methods for reflection evaluation of emotional and interaction competence in digital environments.
• To share the outcomes and findings on local and national levels for the benefit of teacher communities.

TOVE project involves teacher educators from four universities. The project is coordinated by University of Jyväskylä.  Other partners are University of Helsinki, University of Turku and Jamk University of applied sciences. Read more https://tove.jyu.fi/

More information about TOVE's implementation in Jamk:

Principal Researcher Sirpa Laitinen-Väänänen
040 5889 919, first [email protected]
Jamk's School of Professional Teacher Education