Browsing by Author "Vähtäri, Jaakko"

The aim of this study was to research class teacher students’ conceptions of emotional skills and the education of emotional skills and its significance in the context of primary education. Another ambition was to investigate how the contents of emotional education were considered in the university studies, based on the experiences of class teacher students. Based on earlier studies, emotional education has a holistic effect on the development of children, but regardless of it, the teachers receive only little education to help developing pupils’ emotional skills. The training of teachers is one of the most significant factors in emotional education of the pupils, according to other studies, hence the aim of this paper is also to research how the teacher education could be improved to prepare the class teacher students to feel more secure about emotional education in primary education. The material of the research consisted of the interviews of eight master’s degree class teacher students, who were in their fourth or fifth year of studies in the University of Helsinki. The material was collected and analysed with a qualitative method. The interviews were semi-structured, and the material was analysed with a phenomenographic approach. The results of the study are based on categories of description formed by phenomenographic analysis. According to the results, class teacher students had a structured understanding of the holis-tic significance of primary education’s emotional education for children’s development. Emo-tional skills were considered as skills that improve children’s ability to identify and control feelings, empathy, social skills, and interaction with others. Emotional education was consid-ered an important part of primary education, whose aim is to create a base for the develop-ment of emotional skills and to improve the most significant emotional skills, as viewed by the primary school teacher students. The class teacher students felt as though they had not re-ceived enough education related to primary education’s emotional education and its imple-mentation. The class teacher students think the university should provide the basis and more information about practical methods that work in implementation of emotional education. The class teacher students would improve the teacher training’s methods of teaching and contents, in order to make processing emotional education more relevant and consistent.