EMOTIONAL IMPACT OF CRITICAL INCIDENTS EXPERIENCED IN THE CONTEXT OF INITIAL TEACHER TRAINING PRACTICES

The aim of this research is to investigate the emotional impact of critical incidents experienced by primary teacher students on their training experiences. The literature is generous regarding the study of critical incidents in the professional development of teachers, their unexpected nature and emotional demand affect not only professional performance but also the subjective educational theories themselves and, with it, the configuration of teachers' professional identity. However, the focus has preferably been on the development of teachers inserted in the system and not on practice experiences in initial teacher training. Practice experiences are highly valued by students, but at the same time they are deployed as problematic scenarios due to their demanding and constantly changing context. Likewise, teacher training programs do not consider specific preparation to face classroom conflicts and their socio-emotional implications. This study is qualitative and has an exploratory, descriptive and relational design. A critical incident recording guideline and a semi-structured interview were used to collect data. Based on a thematic analysis, the most frequent and relevant incidents were identified and characterized, as well as the responses and emotions they trigger in the students. The results allow us to identify different types of critical incidents: on one hand, at the level of personal relationships and, on the other, at the level of teaching situations, as well as different response strategies against them. At the same time, a determining impact is observed in different aspects of the teacher identity under construction such as motivation, self-esteem and pedagogical management, mostly associated with a negative dimension. Based on the analysis of these results, it is suggested to delve deeper into the contours and dynamics of the emotional geography of teaching. It is a territory where quick, functional and generic proposals abound with fashionable theories that are incorporated into teacher training, sometimes informally, as magical or instantaneous strategies. It is also suggested to incorporate the situational narrative of the practitioners in different formats: guidelines for recording critical incidents, diaries or practice logs as part of a reflective exercise. The promotion of this device must allow the visualization of the trajectory of the different practices as a process. For example, a personal online portfolio that begins in the first observation practices and remains active until professional practice, which would allow students to configure a journey plot based on these critical incidents and the different ways in which they have been faced.