Teachers have been ascribed a central role in students’ learning and development. Especially how
teachers relate to their students was proposed as a key factor explaining learning effects and
teacher effectiveness. However, recent meta-analytic research suggests that teachers’ self-efficacy
and personality traits show only small associations with student academic performance.
Today’s thinking in education further suggests that, in addition to academic achievement on
subjects such as language, math, or sciences, also social-emotional skills of students should be
explicit outcomes of education. It has been demonstrated that students’ social-emotional skills are
directly useful in the classroom to facilitate learning, but that these skills are also outcomes in
themselves necessary to prepare for the challenges of the 21st century. However, it remains unclear
what the impact of teachers is on performance and the development of social-emotional skills in
students.
The present joint Belgian-Brazilian research proposal reconciles these two distinct research lines,
and will examine the validity of a specifically designed social-emotional skill framework for teachers
to predict students’ academic achievement and social-emotional skills. The research will use a
comprehensive and innovative social-emotional skills’ framework for teachers, going beyond
general personality traits, and will examine its validity to understand both academic and socialemotional
skill outcomes in students.