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 objectives are:

• To study and improve emotional and interaction competence in digital environments, through integrating research-based knowledge and practice from universities, vocational teacher education, and from the results of earlier projects.
• To build a model for developing emotional and interactional skills in digital environments, especially in online environments e.g., augmented reality.
• To promote and expand emotional and interaction skills that contribute to the well-being of teachers in digital environments remembering the social, emotional, and cognitive dimensions.
• To create tools and methods for reflecting teaching skills for improving own interaction practices.
  
• To share and disseminate the outcomes and findings on local and national levels.