Bio:
Belgin Elmas is a professor working as the ELT Department Head at TED University since 2018.
She had her undergraduate and Ph.D degrees at Anadolu University ELT Department and her MA at Bilkent University with Fulbright Scholarship. She served as Deputy Director of Graduate School of Education Sciences between 2004-2008, and as the Director of School of Foreign Languages between 2014-2019. In her doctorate dissertation, Elmas focused on the sources of foreign language anxiety in speaking and writing skills and since then has been conducting research mainly on teacher training, technology integration in language teaching, distance learning and curriculum development. She directed many MA theses on various topics and two PhD theses on language assessment. Working as a director and a researcher in various TUBİTAK and BAP projects, Elmas has been teaching courses including methodology in language teaching, teaching English to children, digital material development and individual differences in language learning.
Title and Abstract of the Talk:Emotionally Agile Teachers, Emotionally Agile Generations
The purpose of education is to enable the individuals to discover their potential and guide them to use it in the most effective way. It teaches us not to give up, to stand up and to survive. So where are our feelings in this education process? How do we know what to do when we are sad, afraid, or angry? Should we learn these in school? Is this the responsibility of the school? There are so many things to learn, teachers have a lot of work to do, should they also deal with our constantly changing emotions? The answer is undoubtedly YES. Since emotions are about people, emotion management should be a part of an education system that puts people in its focus. As Susan David suggests, if people can become aware of their inner world, their feelings, they can question their own life stories without judgment and curiosity and see what they can learn from them and continue on their way. Raising emotionally agile students requires emotionally agile teachers. Only teachers who can adapt to change act according to value judgments, cope with challenging emotions, be compassionate towards others and themselves, and accept themselves as they are, can only offer a decent education. The World Economic Forum calls emotional agility the “SKILL OF THE FUTURE”. This presentation will focus on how to prepare future teachers to be agile individuals so they can help our children to live more fulfilled lives and be useful to themselves and others by adapting an agile characteristic.Keywords: Agility, Agile teachers, Agile learners, Teacher education, Emotions, Teaching