During the process of testing the methodology, case studies and testimonials have been collected to share experiences of the students and the teachers. The distribution of case studies have been organized according to 4 different topics:
Each situation involves multiple subjects (both students and teachers for example), since it is important to have a holistic perspective, seeing the context as a whole – still, it is useful to focus on different subjects with the different cases.
How DoE helped Pupils?
In this section some case studies about how specific students reacted to DoE techniques and how it helped them are presented. If a student often feels lonely in the class, it creates a negative spiral: as a result of loneliness, s/he will start to pick on others, or trying to disappear completely, which makes his/her classmates react to his/her presence in a negative way, which only reinforces the student in his/her feeling of being disconnected. Thanks to the techniques, there is a chance to be seen in a different light, and catalyze empathy in others.
CASE STUDY 1
One student feels that nobody likes and understands him. The other kids are too loud and too restless for him. Teachers do not know why he’s feeling bad. At times he would prefer to crawl and be left alone by everyone else. On the other hand, it saddens him that he has no friends to talk to.
CASE STUDY 2
The student suffers from a lack of attention and concentration, his performance drops much faster than others. He is easily distracted, often changes his activities or leaves them prematurely. In many situations, he also struggles to wait until it is his turn or the teacher has finished speaking. He often finds no way to defer his needs or to withdraw.
CASE STUDY 3
This activity is realized to develop Emotional Competences and empathy of students through identifying the emotions of other students. And so „Guess what I am feeling” activity aimed to increase cooperation within classroom.
Interview to the Italian Students
Interview to the Turkish Students
Teachers’ perspective
The following case studies describe how teachers have acted in different situations and how their actions could improve a specific case. It is often an instant reaction of the teacher or a decision to adpat the technique in a certain way that can help a certain student to move on, to feel integrated, to feel the care. We want to show these little moments that turn things around.
CASE STUDY 1
The teacher decided to implement the DoE in one of his classes because he felt the need to foster relationships between his students who seemed distant from each other, uncommunicative.
CASE STUDY 2
It is connected directly with the expression of the emotions for the pre-school students while teacher implementing the cards of emotion activity.
Interview to the Italian Teachers
Improving cohesion of the class
DoE techniques are useful not only in the sense of helping individual students, but the class as a whole can be benefit from them: the cohesion can improve, the sense of belonging together can arise. As students get to know how their classmates are feeling, they can realize that their emotions are very similar and they can become more empathetic towards each other. Often the common experience („We are a class that is conscious about emotions!”) can create a sense of togetherness, as they feel special for doing these unusual activities. Moreover, not only the relationships amongstudents can improve, but also between students and teacher as well. In this section you can read about these stories.
CASE STUDY 1
There was a serious conflict within the class, as one of the students was stealing from her classmates. Unfortunately the girl was expelled from the school, but through the Postbox technique, the class has managed to express their emotions, forgive the girl and come together stronger than before.
CASE STUDY 2
Dynamic group improvement. The literature professor decided to involve pupils in an extracurricular course implementing the DoE technique of Research Laboratory.
CASE STUDY 3
A class of high-school students who were having difficulty interacting, expressing and recognising emotions, as well as managing them were helped to express emotions by using the Hot chair technique.
Involving the wider environment
In our experience it is usually one or two teachers starting to implement DoE in his/her daily work. However, from the holistic point of view, it would be essential that the whole environment of the students represent the same values so that the child or young people can be reinforced from different important actors in his/her life about how he/she should relate to his/her emotional life. Therefore, it is crucial to try to involve the wider environment as well, including the colleagues, the parents or the wider community. In this section, you can find some examples on how to do it.
CASE STUDY 1
The support of the school headmaster is crucial and working together with at least one colleague is also very important when implementing DoE in schools.
CASE STUDY 2
A new female student joined the class in September 2016. The class had been together for a year, since the 5th grade, and had mostly forged as a class community. The new student had difficulties being in a new group and was often distressed.