Individual action research, personal action research journal, personality and social development

The educators´ preparation for the profession marks progress from cognitive knowledge being passed on to children to the professional model which includes also the significant social appeal in the emotional and conative field. The action research is one of the research strategies which enable to follow the competencies development. The main research question is: “How and in what aspects does personality development-based individual action research help the pedagogy students?”. One year after the individual action research the students worked with personal and social development issues. The data and information collection methods include: the action research personal journal analyses of each individual student, four focus group records´ analyses, the Scales of Psychological Wellbeing – based testing at the beginning and at the end of the action research and semi structured interviews. Based on the journal analyses (open coding) the issues such as fear of speaking in front of others, insecurity in interviewing clients, fear of new experiences, uncontrolled emotions in dealing with conflict situations and prevailing escape strategies when dealing with stress situations emerged. Behavioral techniques application brought about the most progress.