“Why didn’t anyone tell us this before?!”: integrating social, emotional and diversity awareness competencies into teacher professional development

Greater diversity in the classroom and different sources of threat to students’ and teachers’ well-being have made the teaching profession even more demanding. To support teachers in meeting their everyday responsibilities, without detriment to them‐ selves, their students or their colleagues, it is important to provide teachers with com‐ petencies with regard to how to deal with social, emotional and diversity-related career challenges. Today’s teacher professional development should by no means neglect the topics of well-being and diversity. Thus, in this chapter we focus on teachers’ social, emotional and diversity awareness competencies and the possibilities for improving them through teacher professional development. More specifically, we outline the base‐ line theory on social and emotional competencies, diversity awareness and related concepts, with emphasis put on the importance of these competencies in the educa‐ tional context. We also summarise the evidence on the benefits of teacher professional development that integrates social, emotional and diversity awareness competencies. In the conclusion, we briefly point out the theory- and evidence-based features of the programme developed within the project HAND in HAND: Empowering teachers across Europe to deal with social, emotional and diversity-related career challenges (“HAND:ET”).