Teaching educational social abilities to teachers in the context of educational inclusion

Abstract

The teacher's performance in the school requests formation and support to plan and to intervene in situations that promote social behaviors with all the students, including those with disability. In this study, it was aimed to evaluate the teachers' educational social abilities before and after they were submitted to a formation Program in Educational Social Abilities (PESA). 40 teachers of Elementary School from public schools, 10 belonging to the group A and 30 to the group B, participated in the experiment. Considering the size of the second group, strategies of accomplishing the written home activities to be presented in next meeting were implemented. Besides, the communication with the researcher by e-mail in order to put an end to doubts as well as to request support to carry out the activities in classroom. The program was performed during the time reserved to collective work, with eight meetings of about one hour and half. The results showed that the group A presented significant improvement in Explaining evaluating interactive way and a tendency to improvement in Selecting contents and Organizing physical environment. The group B presented significant improvements in all factors of the two scales. The modified structure of the program for the group B may have motivated greater effectiveness. Besides, the sample size may have influenced the sensibility of the statistical test. The possibility to use this type of programs with teachers in order to promote students' socio-emocional development is discussed.