Teacher Training for Socioemotional Skills: an Analysis of Management Strategies in Belo Horizonte – Mg

Marcella Diniz Medina; Flávia Pierrotti de Castro

DOI: 10.22167/2675-6528-202603224

Article derived from a Final Course Work (TCC), with content based on the student’s original work and adapted to the editorial format of the E&S Magazine with the support of the ResumeAI tool, an artificial intelligence solution developed by the Pecege Institute for textual synthesis and organization.

Abstract

This study investigated management practices that support teacher training for socio-emotional skills in the municipal network of Belo Horizonte (MG). The objective was to analyze the municipal network’s management strategies for socio-emotional training, confronting them with the state guidelines of Minas Gerais and observing how they align or diverge. A qualitative documentary research was used, which traced the itinerary of public policies and analyzed how the guidelines were transposed and reorganized between the state and municipal spheres. Content analysis, based on Bardin (2011), was applied to the Minas Gerais Reference Curriculum, the Training School platform, and the Socio-emotional Project. The results revealed that the municipality recontextualized the state guidelines, adapting them to local realities and generating a diversity of strategies. However, a prioritization of self-instructional models was observed, which weakened dialogue and knowledge exchange, as well as an intensification of teaching work with the attribution of socio-emotional responsibilities without due institutional support. It was concluded that, despite the documentary alignment, management strategies lack effective mechanisms for practical viability and the materialization of proposals in daily school life, requiring a structure that sustains the complexity of teaching practice.

Keywords: Socioemotional skills; Teacher training; School management; Educational policies.

1. Introduction

Educational management plays a fundamental role in structuring teacher training pathways, especially regarding the development of socio-emotional skills. This study is situated within this context, focusing on the reality of the municipal education network in the city of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. The intention is to understand how educational management guidelines and practices manifest in preparing teachers for the growing demands of the contemporary scenario.

The debate on the expansion of the teacher’s functions has ceased to be marginal and has become a central point in educational policies and current studies. There is a real intensification of teaching work, in which the teacher is called upon to manage multiple demands and responsibilities that distance themselves from the daily school life of previous decades (Andrade Oliveira, 2004). This complexity shows that the professional identity of the teacher is today constituted by knowledge of distinct natures and growing demands in the exercise of teaching (Tardif, 2014).

In this scenario of transformations and intensification of demands, the theme of socioemotional skills gains centrality in curricula. This is not a mere punctual addition to the programmatic content, but a profound change in the very professional identity of the educator. The teacher, as Perrenoud (2000) already pointed out, acts as a mediator of processes involving social and relational dimensions, a perspective that proves even more relevant in the current educational context.

However, a central question remains: how are these professionals being prepared to respond to such demands? Discussing this preparation necessarily implies reflecting on teacher training. Nóvoa (2009) highlights that training does not occur in a fragmented way or at isolated moments, but is a continuous process, built in the daily school routine and through constant dialogue with practice.

It is at this point that educational management assumes a central role. It should not be seen merely as an instance for reproducing higher directives, but as the decision-making space responsible for defining priorities and enabling these processes in the school’s daily life. The effectiveness of management, as Lück (2011) emphasizes, lies in the capacity to transform organizational culture, as educational changes are only sustained when supported by an internal structure that legitimizes and supports them. Thus, addressing the socio-emotional without considering management strategies implies a superficial analysis.

Furthermore, it is crucial to consider the trajectory of ideas and the materialization of guidelines across different management levels. Guidelines do not arrive linearly from the state secretariat to the municipal classroom; they undergo processes of recontextualization and the production of new meanings, as proposed by Lopes and Macedo (2011). In this trajectory between different instances, policies are translated and hybridized, assuming new configurations and meanings that respond to local realities.

This work is justified by the need to understand the complexity of implementing teacher training policies for socio-emotional skills and, in this sense, sought to analyze the management strategies of the municipal network of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, for socio-emotional training, carefully observing how they align with or diverge from the state guidelines of Minas Gerais.

2. Material and Methods

The structuring of this study was based on a qualitative documentary approach, a strategy that allowed for the investigation of the gears of educational management in the municipal network of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. The methodological design sought to trace the itinerary of public policies, analyzing how the guidelines were transposed and reorganized between the state and municipal spheres, with a focus on the development of socio-emotional competencies.

The research focused on the reality of the municipal education network in the city of Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais. The unit of analysis was composed of official documents that materialize educational policies and training strategies for teachers. This type of research, by delving into documents, allowed for an in-depth understanding of the regulations and their application.

The selection of the analysis material fell upon three fundamental pillars of Minas Gerais’ educational policy. The Minas Gerais Reference Curriculum (CRMG), the Minas Gerais Education School platform, and the Socioemotional Project made available on it were analyzed. These documents were considered to materialize the official voice of the State and the training strategies that aim to guide and influence teaching practice in the local context.

The data collection procedures consisted of identifying and accessing these documents. The platform of the Minas Gerais School of Training was accessed on August 11, 2026, as recorded. The analysis of these materials allowed for a confrontation between the official municipal guidelines and the orientations from the state sphere, seeking to understand the articulation or distance between them, in line with the study’s objective.

The treatment of the material followed the rigor of Content Analysis, as proposed by Bardin (2011). Initially, a floating reading was performed for a comprehensive approximation of the norms. Subsequently, an exhaustive exploration of the text was carried out, decomposing the material into units of meaning.

In this stage, we sought to identify how the theme of socioemotional skills and management strategies are categorized and prioritized in the documents. The systematization of these units of meaning allowed the organization of the data into specific analysis categories, which guided the investigation.

The categories of analysis were defined to guide the interpretation of the documents. The category “Normative Recontextualization” sought to identify the alignment, adaptation, and re-signification of state guidelines, such as the CRMG, for the reality of the municipal network of Belo Horizonte. This category allowed us to observe the policy translation processes.

The “Continuing Education Models” category focused on the training strategies of the Minas Gerais School of Education, with attention to self-instructional courses, digital platforms, and technological infrastructure. The “Socioemotional Competencies Prescription” category, on the other hand, aimed to demonstrate the definitions, pedagogical objectives, and goals established in official documents for working with the socioemotional dimension.

Finally, the category “Faculty Assignments and Support” was used to identify mentions of the professor’s role in managing classroom emotions, as well as the presence or absence of mental health support policies for educators. These categories allowed for a structured and targeted analysis of the study’s methodological aspects.

The closing of the investigative arc occurred at the juncture between the documentary findings and the adopted theoretical framework. At this stage, the aim was to understand how state guidelines took on new contours and meanings when recontextualized to the reality of the municipality of Belo Horizonte. The analysis therefore focused on the logic of articulation between the different management levels, seeking to verify whether the strategies presented offer support for the complexity of contemporary teaching work.

3. Results and Discussion

The analysis of management practices aimed at teacher training for socio-emotional competencies in the municipal network of Belo Horizonte revealed a complex scenario, marked by the recontextualization of state guidelines and the adoption of training strategies that, while expanding access, generate significant challenges for pedagogical practice. The findings indicate a tension between what is formally established in the documents and the effective materialization of these proposals in daily school life, highlighting the need for more articulated and sensitive management to the realities of teachers. This study therefore sought to unravel the management gears that shape educators’ daily lives, following the path of norms from their theoretical origin to their practical impact.

Initially, the way the municipal network of Belo Horizonte adapted and re-signified state norms was observed. The Minas Gerais Reference Curriculum (CRMG) presented a predominantly prescriptive and generic character, outlining socio-emotional competencies as goals to be achieved, often without due connection to the concrete working conditions in schools (MINAS GERAIS, 2018). This abstract approach demanded an active process of recontextualization by the municipality, which sought to translate state guidelines into the particularities of the local network.

This recontextualization movement, as discussed by Lopes and Macedo (2011), demonstrated that state guidelines were not merely reproduced, but rather negotiated, adjusted, and hybridized to fit the specificities of Belo Horizonte. Such adaptation is a positive aspect, as it favors greater adherence of pedagogical practices to the local educational context, bringing the abstract curriculum closer to school experiences. The municipal management, in this sense, acted as a space for political and pedagogical articulation, re-signifying official guidelines according to its institutional identity and the demands of its field of action.

However, critical analysis revealed a latent risk in this recontextualization process: the possibility that the documentary alignment between State and Municipality may only be satisfactorily achieved at the formal level, facing insurmountable barriers in the daily lives of institutions. This finding corroborates the reflections of Lück (2011), who emphasizes that management effectiveness is not measured by bureaucratic compliance with documents, but by the ability to promote a transformation in organizational culture. Without this transformation, pedagogical proposals tend to remain only at the level of formalism, without real impact on practice.

The effectiveness of educational policies, therefore, is not sustained solely by the coherence between normative documents, but, above all, by the capacity to mobilize the subjects who operate the school’s daily life. Teacher training assumes a strategic role in this context, not only as a space for conceptual appropriation, but as an instance for constructing meaning about pedagogical practices. When this training dialogues with the concrete experiences of teachers and with the specificities of the territory, the possibility of the guidelines being incorporated critically and contextually is expanded, preventing them from remaining as distant prescriptions.

Management Strategies in the Training School: Between the Prescribed and the Real

The data extracted from the platform of the Minas Gerais School of Education evidenced a management strategy oriented by the massive offer of self-instructional courses, signaling an emphasis on expanding access to continuing education through flexible and scalable modalities (MINAS GERAIS, n.d.). Although the wide availability of digital resources is an advantage in terms of reach and democratization of access to training, the analysis of the content revealed a tendency towards the fragmentation of knowledge, which impacts the depth of learning.

This approach, focused on offering short-term certifications, proved limited by disregarding the need to establish collective spaces for dialogue, reflection, and peer experience exchange, which are vital elements for the construction and strengthening of the teaching professional identity. Nóvoa (2009) argues that effective training is not consolidated in specific moments or solitary learning paths, but is built continuously, collaboratively, and situatedly, within professional practices and peer interactions.

In this sense, educational management demonstrated a dichotomy: at the same time that it invested in providing a robust technological infrastructure, it adopted a training model that, paradoxically, can reinforce the teacher’s isolation. The limitation of possibilities for interaction, collaboration, and collective knowledge construction weakens the training process. This finding directly dialogues with Tardif’s (2014) criticisms regarding the devaluation of experiential knowledge, evidencing the marginalization of knowledge built in teaching practice in favor of standardized and decontextualized training models.

By prioritizing a “top-down” formative model, management runs the risk of disregarding the inherent complexity of teaching. The socio-emotional dimension, in this context, is reduced to a set of instrumentalizable techniques, instead of being understood as an intrinsic dimension of the pedagogical relationship. This perspective can lead to a superficiality in the approach to competencies, preventing teachers from developing a deeper and more integrated understanding of their role in socio-emotional mediation.

The Socioemotional Project and the Intensification of Teaching Work

The Socioemotional Project, made available by the State of Minas Gerais through the School of Training, allowed for the identification of the assignment of a significant burden of responsibilities transferred to the teacher. The project’s implementation context positioned the teacher as the main manager of emotions and conflicts in the classroom environment, which corroborated Oliveira’s (2004) observations regarding the intensification of teaching work, especially concerning the expansion of duties that go beyond traditional pedagogical dimensions.

Although the project was guided by premises of welcome and care, it proved potentially burdensome by adding new layers of demands to a teaching routine already marked by an overload of tasks. The comparative discussion with the literature of Perrenoud (2000) showed that, although the role of mediator of social interactions is constitutive of teaching, the excess of prescriptions contained in the analyzed documents can produce counterproductive effects, such as teacher burnout and the intensification of feelings of professional inadequacy in the face of unrealistic emotional goals or those difficult to operationalize in daily school life.

Furthermore, a distancing was identified in the direction given to school management, which, in this context, assumes the responsibility of adapting the project to the school’s reality, but does not always have sufficient proximity to the concrete demands that emerge in daily life. This scenario reveals a tension between what is proposed in the documents and what, in fact, materializes in institutional practices, as management is challenged to operationalize broad guidelines in contexts marked by multiple urgencies, structural limitations, and already consolidated pedagogical demands.

The absence of closer and more contextualized support can weaken the implementation process, transferring to school management the responsibility of mediating gaps that exceed their capacity to act, especially when there is no systematic support that considers the specificities of each educational unit. This gap in institutional support compromises the effectiveness of the proposals, leaving teachers and local managers with the task of filling the deficiencies of a system that does not offer the necessary conditions for the full execution of guidelines.

A critical point identified was the absence, in the analyzed documents, of guidelines aimed at the emotional support of the teacher themselves. It was observed that educational management concentrated its efforts on defining guidelines on “how the teacher should train the student,” but remained silent on “who takes care of the one who trains.” This gap is significant regarding policies for the care and valorization of the teacher as a subject of the educational process, neglecting the mental health and well-being of professionals who are on the front lines of socio-emotional education.

In summary, the results pointed to the existence of a consistent documentary alignment between the different spheres of educational management, which guarantees a coherent normative basis. However, deep gaps were evidenced regarding practical support and the effective viability of implementing these proposals in daily school life. Training focused on socio-emotional development cannot be restricted to normative prescription; it requires a management structure capable of recognizing, considering, and sustaining the complexity of teaching practice in daily school life, ensuring institutional conditions that enable its effective implementation and promote the well-being of educators.

4. Conclusion

This study analyzed the management strategies of the municipal network of Belo Horizonte (MG) for teacher training in socio-emotional competencies, seeking to understand how these align or diverge from the state guidelines of Minas Gerais. It was found that municipal management did not act as a mere recipient of norms, but undertook an active process of recontextualization of the guidelines from the Minas Gerais Reference Curriculum, adapting them to local particularities. This movement resulted in a documentary alignment between management spheres, conferring coherence to the guidelines. However, a clear prioritization of self-instructional models mediated by digital technologies was observed at the Training School, which, although it expanded access, weakened the spaces for dialogue and the exchange of experiential knowledge among teachers. The analysis indicated that the development of socio-emotional competencies was frequently treated as a set of techniques to be assimilated individually, to the detriment of a collective construction integrated into daily school life. It was also evidenced that the incorporation of these competencies in official documents was associated with an intensification of teacher work, implying an expansion of responsibilities and a complexification of the demands assigned to teachers. The teacher was positioned as the main manager of emotions and conflicts in the classroom, without equivalent compensation in terms of institutional support and care for their own mental health, revealing a silencing of public policies regarding the conditions of reception and support directed at the educators themselves.

In summary, the study contributes to the understanding of the articulations, tensions, and limits that permeate the implementation of teacher training policies for socioemotional skills in the local educational context. The evidence indicates that, although the documentary framework is consolidated and aligned across different management spheres, the adopted strategies still lack effective mechanisms to ensure the practical viability and materialization of proposals in daily school life. It is concluded that training focused on socioemotional development should not be restricted to normative prescription; it requires a management structure capable of recognizing, considering, and sustaining the complexity of teaching practice, ensuring institutional conditions that enable its effective implementation and promote the well-being of educators. The documentary analysis methodology proved effective in identifying these contradictions; however, it has the limitation of not capturing the direct perceptions and experiences of teachers. This restriction suggests the need for future studies that integrate the voices of the subjects involved in the process, in order to broaden the understanding of the materialization of these policies in daily school life.

Bibliographic References

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TARDIF, M. 2014. Saberes docentes e formação profissional. 17. ed. Petrópolis, RJ: Vozes, Brasil.

Article originating from the Final Course Work of the Specialization in School Management of the MBA USP/Esalq

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