Constructive thinking as a key competency in initial teacher education: differences in emotional and cognitive profiles among pre-service teachers
Constructive thinking and emotional competence are increasingly relevant in initial teacher education, particularly for pre-service teachers who must develop emotional intelligence and adaptive strategies before entering the teaching profession. Teacher preparation therefore requires not only continuous professional development, but also the acquisition of socioemotional competencies from the earliest stages of training. A quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional, ex post facto descriptive-comparative study was conducted with 307 students enrolled in Early Childhood Education and Primary Education teacher-education degrees at the Faculty of Education of Albacete, University of Castilla-La Mancha, Spain. Participants were recruited through non-probability convenience sampling and completed the Constructive Thinking Inventory. Group differences were examined by gender, academic year, and degree programme. Participants showed low Global Constructive Thinking scores and comparatively elevated Magical Thinking and Esoteric Thinking scores. Gender comparisons indicated that men scored higher in Global Constructive Thinking, Emotional Coping, Acceptance, Absence of Negative Overgeneralization, and Absence of Hypersensitivity, whereas women scored higher in Magical Thinking, Esoteric Thinking, Superstitious Thinking, and Exaggerated Optimism; the corresponding effects were small to moderate. Academic-year groups differed in several adaptive and non-adaptive dimensions, but the cross-sectional design precludes interpreting these differences as developmental change or as effects of teacher education. Degree-programme comparisons showed higher Emotional Coping, Acceptance, and Absence of Negative Overgeneralization scores among Primary Education students, whereas Early Childhood Education students scored higher in Magical Thinking and Exaggerated Optimism. No statistically significant programme difference was observed in Global Constructive Thinking. The findings identify specific constructive-thinking dimensions that may warrant attention in initial teacher education. Training focused on adaptive coping, cognitive flexibility, critical appraisal of beliefs, and emotional regulation may support pre-service teachers’ professional well-being. However, the observed group differences should be interpreted as cross-sectional associations and not as evidence that teacher education caused the profiles identified.