Abstract:

My twenty-year experience in the field of teacher training has led me to the realization that the key factor in becoming a teacher is the teacher's personality. I think this despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that the official teacher training practices and the teacher training system do not support or reinforce this. In Romania, the development of the personality of teachers has not been widespread in the training of teachers until now, even though the need for it is there by definition, and I think it would greatly boost the effective functioning of the education system. During my experience as a university teacher, I was constantly looking for opportunities and methods that could be used to improve the basic and advanced training of teachers and increase their efficiency. After getting to know and mastering the internationally widespread teacher training methods, I had to realize that most of them focus on the development of the teacher candidate's personality (e.g., school video training, Balint group, audio diary, etc.). I became convinced that the teacher is not primarily called to research and discover science, but rather her/his own personality and that of her/his students’ personality.

In the first part of the paper, I tried to present the method of bibliotherapy in a short and clear way, where I mainly focused on developmental bibliotherapy. After that, I mapped its application and possibilities in teacher training based on my previous professional experience. Rogers' person-centered approach had a great impact on the helping professions and the methods used in this field, so I tried to briefly present those that I feel can be applied in teacher training in a similar way to bibliotherapy. Since professional self-awareness is an important area of becoming a teacher and working as a teacher, I will discuss the significance of why this area is important in the basic and continuing education of teachers. In the second part of the paper, I examine the operation of a weekly, closed, developmental bibliotherapy group with a professional self-awareness-supervision focus, with the participation of practicing teachers, from planning to execution, thinking through the development opportunities that the group members went through, along with the group experience and group processes.

Looking at the group as a whole and on its progress, the evolution of the group can be described with an ascending development curve. All members had sufficient acceptance and understanding towards themselves and their peers. Not only did they accept each other, but they were very empathetic towards each other. They listened, reacted to each other and to what others had to share, and I also felt that a strong group cohesion had developed. The most intensively experienced therapeutic factors were universality, information transfer, imitation, interpersonal learning and group cohesion. The group also fulfilled its supervisory purpose, as each group member was able to express how they see themselves from a professional point of view, what they are satisfied with, and what they would like to change.

Keywords:

Teacher training, professional self-awareness, interpersonal learning, bibliotherapy.