Making psychodynamic insights accessible to teachers as an integral part of their professional task

Inclusive classrooms require teachers who are prepared to be ‘responsive pedagogues’ to all their pupils, both in the sense of an individual commitment and as a task for each school to enable all its teachers to meet such a commitment. Based on the writer’s extensive experience as a psychodynamically oriented education consultant, this paper explores the possibilities of enriching the learning environment for pupils and teachers. It examines how therapeutic insights may be applied in a consultative staff development process beyond mainly ‘remedial’ tasks and shows how enabling skills, which focus on promoting insight into emotional and social factors in children’s learning help to enhance teachers’ overall competence. In the context of the reductive effects of the current excessively ‘results’-centred teaching climate on teachers’ opportunities to address the affective dimension of the learning process, it analyses the new developments the government has begun to encourage in favour of high-quality professional development of teachers.