Positive psychology in the masters' classrooms with bitácora, debate, abp and theater

Abstract

The education in values and socio-emotional competences has been recognized as an essential part of the initial part and permanent teacher training. In this work, we present a program designed from the framework of Positive Psychology for the subject named Training in Values and Personal Competences for Pre-Service Teachers (TVPCPT), taught in the two degrees in Teaching at the University of Cantabria. This program, integrates theoretical expositions with active methodologies centered on reflective and documented experiential learning in a logbook, dialogic learning, problem based learning (PBL) and Forum Theatre. The participating students responded, anonymously and voluntarily, to the evaluation of their empathy, before and after the training and to a final evaluation of the teaching-learning process.The results reflect the wide satisfaction of the students with the innovative methodologies, their learning (fundamentally with regard to social conscience, emotional
self-management and self-awareness and its value) and allow the identification of elements for the optimization of the program.On the one hand, the assesment made of the essential components of each methodology suggests which requieres a greater shared monitoring between teachers and students. On the othe hand, the impact assesed on empathy demonstrates the potential of the strategies employed. It concludes with the need to continue researching in order to optimize the methodological tools used for teaching and for evaluation.