490069 KU Soziale und Personale Kompetenzen (2023W)

Title: Embodied Wellbeing. Personal and Social Competences for Teachers.

In this seminar, we reflect on teachers' and students' wellbeing.

Personal and social competences are increasingly relevant in the teaching profession. Nowadays teachers are not only required to transmit and evaluate pedagogical content but also to self-regulate their behavior and mood, properly manage classroom's dynamics, and promote their own as well as students’ psychophysical wellbeing.

During this course, we will see the main theories of wellbeing and the related pedagogical traditions. Then, we will discuss three different but strictly interconnected dimensions of wellbeing: personal, social, and systemic wellbeing. We will also look at some of the main terminological and semantic variations of the concept of wellbeing, such as eudaimonia, hedonism, happiness, flourishing and quality of life. Finally, we will discuss relevant practical tools and strategies to promote psychophysical wellbeing within the school context.

We will adopt the embodied education and systems thinking approaches as theoretical frameworks. On the practical side, we will engage in experiential activities in the field of mind-body practices, in particular focused and open meditation and mindfulness meditation, which has received great attention in the last decade (the so-called ‘contemplative turn’).

We will critically discuss these themes and their implementation in the educational field and in the professional training of teachers, and we will gain theoretical and practical knowledge about teachers’ personal and social wellbeing.

In particular, we will see:
- Main definitions of teachers and students’ wellbeing.
- Usage, effects and problematic issues of contemplative practices in educational settings.
- Contemplative practices for teachers and students: why, when and how to use them in the educational setting.
- How to plan and implement educational projects on quality of life at school.

This course helps students to develop professional skills and awareness for the promotion of personal and social wellbeing in educational context. By the end of the course, students will acquire the following skills:
- Recognize and use technical terminology and concepts from the fields of wellbeing and contemplative practices.
- Evaluate and promote crucial aspects of personal and social wellbeing.
- Adopt basic elements of body-mind practices in educational settings to improve teachers and students’ wellbeing.
- Design and implement wellbeing activities in classroom.
- Develop critical and scientific attitude toward mindfulness meditation and the “contemplative turn” in education.

The course will include frontal teaching, interactive discussions, case studies, group’s work, and experiential training. Teaching method is highly interactive and participatory. Learning activities are:
- Lectures with media support on central theoretical concepts and empirical topics.
- Plenary discussions.
- Small groups' work.
- One short written report and one final written project.
- Final presentation and discussion of the research project in plenary.
- Guided mindfulness experience.

The main language of the course is English.