Teachers' Relational Competencies: the Contribution from Teacher Education

Research has thoroughly documented that good social relations in school are important and effective for students' academic learning and well-being alike. It is also well-documented that having good social relations in a class requires the teacher to have relational competencies. This article presents experiences of relational work in the classroom described by student teachers who participated in a development project that aimed to include relational competencies in the pre-service teacher education curriculum compared to student teachers following the ordinary teacher education programme at VIA University College, Aarhus, Denmark. An interview survey of student teachers' preliminary output in the spring of 2014 were phenomenologically based, qualitative, and were in-depth asking for detailed descriptions of significant incidents as they were experienced by the student teachers during their recent pre-service training. The interviews showed that student teachers taking part in the project had acquired a relationship with the teacher's role that was more reflective and experimenting than the student teachers following the ordinary program. Halfway through a four-year process with particular emphasis on relational competencies, the student teachers participating in the project are taking a more reflective and experimental approach to the teacher's role. Although this may not be a fully developed relational competence, it is presumably a significant step along the way.//Raziskave so pokazale, da so dobri socialni odnosi v soli pomembni tako za ucenje kot za dobro pocutje pri ucencih. Prav tako so pokazale, da je za dobre socialne odnose v razredu potrebno, da ima ucitelj razvito odnosno kompetenco. V tem clanku predstavljamo delo z odnosi v razredu, kot ga vidijo studenti-ucitelji, ki so sodelovali v razvojnem projektu, katerega cilj je bil vkljuciti odnosne kompetence v zacetno izobrazevanje uciteljev, v primerjavi s studenti-ucitelji, ki so studirali po rednem programu izobrazevanja uciteljev na VIA University College v Aarhusu na Danskem. Raziskava temelji na preliminarnih intervjujih s studenti-ucitelji spomladi leta 2014 (torej po dveh letih oziroma po polovici studija); intervjuji so fenomenoloski in temeljijo na kvalitativnih, poglobljenih opisih pomembnih dogodkov, kot so jih studenti-ucitelji doziveli tekom svojega zacetnega usposabljanja. Intervjuji so pokazali, da so studenti-ucitelji, ki sodelujejo v projektu, zmozni vecje refleksije svoje ucitelj