OVERVIEW
For many years education has focused on the learners’ acquisition of the well-known hard skills thus, prioritizing cognition. Aspects such as resilience and emotions have been neglected in the pursue of rational thinking and academic knowledge. As of recently, educators have started to acknowledge the importance of introducing soft-skills and of observing learners’ social and emotional domains as scaffolding elements that foster the development of communicative competence and that promote life-long learning. In this session we will address the particular relevance of enhancing healthy relationships in the language classroom and we will refer to theorists such as Claxton, Vygotsky and Bruner and to how they identify learning dispositions such as curiosity and reflectiveness as core to foster language acquisition and life-long learning.
ESTHER VÁZQUEZ
Esther Vázquez is an experienced teacher and teacher trainer in the ESL field and has taught English extensively at different levels and backgrounds and she is also an Academic Consultant for National Geographic Learning. She has delivered presentations all over South America, in Central America, Spain, India and in the USA. Esther holds a BA in Educational Management and has specialized in the areas of Neurolearning, Neurodiversity and Social and Emotional Learning over the last 12 years and, in March 2022 she got her Master’s degree in Neurosciences for Educators. Esther is founder and CEO of EVenio Educational Consultancy and accompanies institutions as an adviser in the pedagogic and academic fields. In 2017 she was granted a Professional Development Scholarship by TESOL International (USA).
