REC YOURSELF - Relational Emotional Competences (REC)

The REC YOURSELF Project was conceived by several professionals figures working in different ways within educational institutions and who are joined by their passion for psychology: an informal group of nineteen young people consisting of psychologists, psychotherapists, trainers and teachers belonging to a private training school for psychology, psychotherapy and scientific research.
Being the teaching profession at the center of the current european political debate, the Project aims to improve the quality of education system by training teachers to be experts of emotions and relational dynamics - Relational Emotional Competences (REC) - that animate and mediate learning processes. The lack trained and motivated teachers are a concern for many European countries (Eurydice, 2002), including Italy. In this country, especially in the South, most of teachers are not up to date with new ways to develop knowledge and are poorly motivated (RES Foundation 2014). Indeed, one of the challenges, identified by the European Council Recommendations for Italy in 2013, is improving quality and results of the Italian school system by strengthening teachers’ professional development.
Our goal is to improve the quality of teaching and, indirectly, of students’ learning, encouraging the implementation of relational and emotional competences (REC) in teaching staff. The teacher-student relationship is at the centre of students’ learning process that cannot be reduced to a mere transfer of theoretical knowledge, but it concerns also students’ maturation in terms of psychological and emotional development. For this reason, we aim to develop teachers’ skills implementing the REC. Scientific studies show that the development of these competences is an useful condition in creating a positive supportive classroom environment to succeed in school, with positive effects on academic achievement, reducing the number of students’ dropouts (considering that this is one of objective of European strategy for 2020 )
The specific objectives of the project will be:
- to enhance teachers’ professional and psychological competences, relevant for teaching.
- to build enganging physical and virtual learning spaces in which teachers can think out their recurring relational and emotional performances, their personal motivation, resources and critical issues of their professional role.
- to develop and disseminate innovative training approaches based on REC, also through mobile applications and interactive web portals.
- to Promote collaborative learning and exchange of good practices on European level.
- to Promote equity and social inclusion in education and training.
The project activities based on individual needs, we can distinguish three main areas:
- Transforming the school into a real "gym of being", the center of cognitive, affective and social growth of citizens.
- Offer to teachers additional tools, identified from an exchange of good practices at European level that aim at responding to the daily " educational challenge".
- Offer to the citizens / parents a good-quality education for their children, taking into account their maturation as " persons " as well as students .
We propose a theoretical and experiential work model that uses the group as an elective methodology. In particular, it uses focus-groups conducted by psychologists that thinks out relational dysfunctional, group dynamics, emotional experiences during the teaching activities in order to stimulate and manage the critical role of teacher.
Moreover, it is also expected to implement and use multimedia tools supporting teachers in their work (interactive web platform and app for smartphones) . Another important point concerns the identification and dissemination of an innovative training approach based on the REC, to better meet the needs and demands for improvement of the European school system.
The activities planned for the project are divided into six work packages:
-W.P. 1 : project management, partnership and transnational meetings - W.P. 2 : context analysis and best transnational practices, meetings on the issues and project objectives.
- W.P. 3: mobility activities aimed at promoting the observation, comparison and sharing of best practices with respect to the REC.
- W.P. 4 : activation of the experimental groups REC .
- W.P. 5 : analysis and evaluation of the work done with teachers.
- W.P. 6 : the use and dissemination of project results .