Emotional Education: Paradoxes, Risks and Opportunities

Authors

Abstract

This article aims to contribute to think about the relationships between emotions, education and teaching, as well as to pose a questioning of the hegemonic, psychologicist and individualistic approach on emotional education. First, the main characteristics of the teaching profession are described as emotional work. Secondly, some sources are analyzed on which the psychologist model of emotional education proposed by international organizations and most influential proposals that have been installed in our country are based. Third, a series of criticisms of this approach are presented, such as: the danger of individualization and psychologization of complex social problems; blaming and making each teacher responsible for “emotional” problems at work; the denial and repression of "negative emotions"; the tendency to privilege emotions oriented towards greater individual performance and the achievement of measurable objectives; the dangers of increasing teacher stress and work overload; and the commodification of the emotional in education. Finally, it remarks the opportunities and potential that emotional education can have from the perspective of critical pedagogies and the experience of the pedagogical movement in Chile.

Keywords:

Emotional education, teaching work, emotional work, teacher emotions, socio-emotional skills

Author Biographies

Rodrigo Cornejo-Chávez, University of Chile

Rodrigo Cornejo-Chávez

Professor of the Department of Psychology of the University of Chile, Santiago, Chile; psychologist, PhD in Psychology.

Rodrigo Araya-Moreno, University of Chile

Rodrigo Araya-Moreno

Member of the Psychology, Education and Society Team Program (EPES), Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile; Master (c) in Educational Psychology, University of Chile.

Sebastián Vargas-Pérez, University of Chile

Sebastián Vargas-Pérez

Member of the Psychology, Education and Society Team Program (EPES), Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile; Master in Educational Psychology, University of Chile.

Diego Parra-Moreno, University of Chile

Diego Parra-Moreno

Member of the Psychology, Education and Society Team Program (EPES), Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Chile, Santiago, Chile; PhD in Psychology , University of Chile.