Education to Dialogue: Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis as a Framework in Teacher Education. An Explorative Study.

The Educational Sector of Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis can be considered as a ‘key-instrument’ for a modern person-centered Pedagogy that aims to promote Education to Dialogue as a necessary competence to meet expectations of the Learning Society. The acquisition of relational and existential skills is, indeed, one of the main goals of an educational system which aims at promoting non-violent, inclusive, and participative societies.  For this reason, the capacity of managing adequate communication implies the ability to develop a situation of communicative reciprocity, which is also an instrument for preventing and handling problems. This study outlines some conceptual and methodological signposts for promoting Education to Dialogue with the purpose of developing a first conceptual framework which could be used to introduce and facilitate communicative attitudes and skills based on the philosophy of Eric Berne. The study states, answering to the research’s questions, that Education to Dialogue is appropriate for education to meet the expectations of the Learning Society,  and responds to the educational challenges of a world in constant transformation. More specifically, it states that the introduction of Educational Transactional Analysis in teacher education is an effective tool for the development of specific relational-existential skills as necessary prerequisites for Education to Dialogue. Finally, it states that Educational Transactional Analysis can be implemented in Teacher Education. Eric Berne’s philosophy in its educational sector can provide a theoretically-grounded set of concepts to be applied in teacher education as a means to promote the healthy development of the personality of the pupils and as a response to existential-educational needs of post-modern man, being besides grounded in firm philosophical and epistemological milestones – Personalism, Phenomenology, and Existentialism. Educational Transactional Analysis demonstrates, also on the basis of existing applications, to be a means to offer a conceptual pattern for the transformation of the principles of the humanistic philosophy and psychology into practice.   The new knowledge which emerges from this research consists in offering to Teacher Education an innovative and unprecedented vademecum for the acquisition of existential-relational skills, aimed at promoting Education to Dialogue. Finally, this research has potentially strong research policy connection: it can contribute to educational policy, enriching teachers' professional quality standards and curricula development for future Teacher Education.