The social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers is not only the professional competence that pre-service teachers need to acquire to cope with the complex challenges of future teacher work and cultivate students' social-emotional competence, but also a key competence to respond to the wave of teacher education reform from "one-sidedness" to "holistic". It is crucial to break the shackles of one-sided emphasis on cognition and teaching skills in the field of teacher education under "technological rationality" and "subjective intellectualism" and pay more attention to the development of teachers' emotions and social aspects for cultivating a "holistic teacher" with comprehensive development of knowledge, emotion, and sociality. During the 14th Five Year Plan period, in the context of building China into an "educational powerhouse", cultivating the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers is of great significance for achieving the goal of educating "comprehensive" people with "integrated" teachers, improving the quality of education, and building an educational powerhouse. However, there is a dual dilemma of insufficient practical support and a lack of research on the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers. The existing research on social-emotional competence mainly focuses on students' social-emotional competence, and research on teachers' social-emotional competence also shows a preference for in-service teachers as the research object. Specialized research on pre-service teachers' social-emotional competence is extremely scarce, and the three core issues are not yet clear: what is the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers? what is the current situation of the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers in China? how to promote the development of the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers?
In response to the three core research questions mentioned above, this study is based on the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning’s Framework and the Interconnected Model of Teacher Professional Growth, and uses a multi-stage mixed research design to explore the structural model, current characteristics, and development mechanism of pre-service teachers’ social-emotional competence through six sub-studies comprehensively and systematically. Research 1 and Research 2 focus on the construction and validation of structural models. Based on the common understanding of the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers by 26 participants in three categories (15 pre-service teachers, 6 in-service teachers, and 5 teacher educators), Research 1 constructs a theoretical structural model of the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers. Research 2 is based on the theoretical construction of Study 1, and relies on the development of the "Pre-service Teachers’ Social-Emotional Competence Scale" to verify and improved the theoretical model of pre-service teachers' social-emotional competence via empirical data from 1382 pre-service teachers in 15 universities and determine the final structural model of pre-service teachers' social-emotional competence. At the same time, a specialized measurement tool was provided for subsequent research. Research 3 and Research 4 focus on revealing the characteristics of the current situation. Research 3 and 4 used the "Pre-service Teachers’ Social-Emotional Competence Scale" to investigate the social-emotional competence of 8483 pre-service teachers in 45 universities in China. Then, variable-centered analysis methods and person-centered analysis methods were separately used to reveal the social-emotional competence of Chinese pre-service teachers in general characteristics, category characteristics, and their relationship with three major background factors, namely personal factors (gender, age, whether one is an only child, teaching willingness, personality traits, professional application preferences, student cadre experience, club activity experience, tutoring experience), family factors (hometown location, whether one of the parents is a teacher, father's highest education, mother's highest education, and family emotional atmosphere) and educational factors (location of the university, type of university, major, educational status, grade, academic performance, whether it is a graduate student, whether it is in the internship period, and educational-practice days). Research 5 and Research 6 focus on identifying and validating development mechanisms. Research 5 conducted interviews with 15 pre-service teachers and 6 in-service teachers to extract professional factors that promote the development of pre-service teachers' social-emotional competence in teacher education contexts (university field, practical field, and internal domain), and explored three possible paths, namely knowledge, experience, and integrated development. Based on the results of Research 5, Research 6 constructed a multiple parallel mediation model with three types of professional support (university teacher support, professional curriculum support, and practical tutor support) as antecedents, self-reflection and practice engagement as mediators, and pre-service teachers' social-emotional competence as outcome variables, and verified this model based on the survey data of 7542 pre-service teachers to reveal the professional mechanism by which professional support drives the development of social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers.
Based on the above series of studies, the following research conclusions are finally drawn:
(1) In terms of the structural model, the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers can be deconstructed into three elements (including eight categories), that is self-emotional regulation competence (self-emotional perception, self-emotional understanding, and self-emotional management), professional relationship building competence (awareness of others, conflict resolution) and professional affairs responsibility (general responsibility, care in teacher-student interaction, and the responsibility of social-emotional education). The three competency elements and their interrelationships constitute the structural model of pre-service teachers' social-emotional competence. Based on this model, the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers is defined as the multidimensional composite competence of pre-service teachers to build internal self-emotions, external professional relationships, and approach professional affairs with a responsible attitude, which aims to cultivate a pre-service teacher who has positive emotions, can care about others, and has love and responsibility. The "Pre-service Teachers’ Social-Emotional Competence Scale" developed based on this model has good reliability and validity and can be used as a specialized tool for evaluating the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers. Compared with the general social-emotional competence model and the teacher social-emotional competence model, the contribution and uniqueness of this model lie in reflecting the essential connotation of pre-service teachers' social-emotional competence as a relational competence, composite competence, and professional competence, as well as the Chinese cultural genes of "relationship orientation", "benevolence", "liangxin, liangzhi, liangneng", as well as the dual identity attributes of pre-service teachers as "students" and "teachers".
(2) In terms of current characteristics, the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers in China exhibits an upper-middle level, an "olive-shaped" distribution, imbalanced development, and is affected by multiple factors. Firstly, the overall level of social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers in China is above average, but there is an imbalance in the development of sub-abilities, weak professional relationship-building competence, and strong professional affairs responsibility. Secondly, the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers in China can be classified into three categories and exhibit an "olive-shaped" distribution characteristic: lower social-emotional competence (34.32%), medium social-emotional competence (45.4%), and higher social-emotional competence (20.29%). Thirdly, the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers is significantly influenced by individual factors (i.e., teaching willingness, personality traits, professional application preferences, and social-practice experience), family factors (i.e., family emotional atmosphere), and educational factors (i.e., major, academic performance, and educational-practice days). Pre-service teachers with low teaching willingness, introverted personality, non-first application choice, lack of social-practical experience (student cadre experience, tutoring class or part-time tutoring experience), cold family emotional atmosphere, major in preschool education, lower grades (the bottom 20 percent of the class), and short educational practice days (30 days or less) have relatively low social-emotional competence and are more likely to be distributed in the category of "lower social-emotional competence".
(3) In terms of development mechanism, the development of social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers is the result of their professionalization essentially. Professional courses that emphasize both "specialized training" and "practical orientation", university faculty who "impart knowledge" and "emotional care", and practical mentors with "nice personalities" and "rich experience" are external professional factors for the development of social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers. Self-reflection and practice experience is internal professional factors for the development of the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers. The interaction between external professional support (university teachers, professional courses, practical mentors) and internal professional resources (reflective awareness, practical experience) constitutes three professional development paths for pre-service teachers' social-emotional competence, which are knowledge orientation, experience orientation, and integrated development direction. Verified by multiple mediation models, both the three types of external professional support and the two types of internal professional resources can directly and positively predict the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers; at the same time, the three types of external professional support can also indirectly and positively predict the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers by driving the two types of internal professional resources. Besides, there is no significant difference in the direct effect, total indirect effect, and the total effect of the three types of professional support in predicting the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers, indicating that these three types of professional support are equally important.
In summary, this study clarifies the concept and connotation of pre-service teachers' social-emotional competence and develops the "Pre-service Teachers’ Social-Emotional Competence Scale" based on the construction of the structural model of pre-service teachers' social-emotional competence. At the same time, based on a large-scale survey of 8483 pre-service teachers' social-emotional competence in 45 universities across the country, it also revealed the general characteristics and category characteristics of social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers in China. What's more, it has clarified the professional development mechanism of pre-service teachers' social-emotional competence by identifying and validating the mechanisms of external professional support (university teacher support, professional course support, practical mentor support) and internal professional resources (reflection awareness, practical engagement) on the social-emotional competence of pre-service teachers. The above research results not only contribute to the development framework of pre-service teachers' social-emotional competence in theory, which include structural models and development mechanism models, but also enrich the specialized research on pre-service teachers' social-emotional competence from structural models, current characteristics, and development mechanism. It also provides inspiration for promoting curriculum development, teacher construction, student development, and ultimately building an integrated development-oriented social-emotional competence education system in the field of teacher education.
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