Emotional competences in the training of secondary education teachers and their relationship with attitudes towards mathematics

Abstract

This research has studied the emotional competences in the training of secondary education teachers and their relationship with attitudes towards mathematics. It was adopted a mixed design developed in two complementary stages. The first, the technique of content analysis was applied as a qualitative methodology in order to obtain normative and instructive information. The second, a questionnaire was applied as a methodology of quantitative study that gives us information about attitudes towards mathematics. The study was carried out with a sample of 250 teachers of secondary education, belonging to communities of the Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua. The main results highlight the existence of emotional and attitudinal competence in teacher training curricula, characterized by courses such as emotional development, motivation and learning, education for emotional development and integral formation; attitudes towards mathematics and factors that determine it (anxiety, pleasure, usefulness, motivation, confidence) are positive; there are significant differences between men and women in favor of women; likewise there are differences between specialties in favor of the specialty in Natural Sciences. It is concluded that the emotional competences in training of teachers of secondary school are related to attitudes towards mathematics, because there is a frame of reference that is established in the profile of teacher training, in addition, that the attitudes of teachers towards mathematics they are positive, all this is interpreted as an articulation in the teaching and learning processes of mathematics.