EMOTIONAL AWARENESS OF ELEMENTARY STUDENTS. ANALYSIS OF NEEDS AND INTERVENTION PROPOSALS

Abstract

"The ability to master emotional vocabulary is evidenced to enhance emotional expression, as well as broaden knowledge of the world and facilitate interpersonal relationships. Also, it helps to develop critical thinking, promotes abstraction, deepens self-knowledge, emotional regulation, forge solid social relationships and improves emotional competencies: emotional awareness, emotional regulation, emotional autonomy, social competence and competences for life and well-being. Some of them are mediated by language, such as emotional awareness which is the first step towards becoming aware of one’s own emotions and the emotions of others as well as capturing the emotional climate of a particular context. This study aims to be a needs analysis to detect the level of emotional vocabulary that primary students know differentiating between positive, negative and ambiguous emotions. Consequently, the differences between gender and grades had been explored. The sample of this study was constituted of 551 primary students (335 boys and 216 girls). An instrument developed ad-hoc was implemented to measure the emotional vocabulary. A quantitative analysis was done with the program IBM SPSS Statistics 24.0 software. The results showed that as participants' ages increased, more positive emotions were detected. Apart from that, a greater number of negative and ambiguous emotions were noticed in the older participants. On the other hand, the younger participants reported an increased number of positive words. As compared to the boys, the girls reported more positive words. To explain these results, a variety of explanations and arguments could be considered. According to previous research, studies have demonstrated how relevant is to carry out emotional competence’s programmes based in emotional education in primary schools at early ages, since then exists major flexibility and capacity to acquire emotional vocabulary. These interventions also prevent bullying and aid in conflict resolution, in addition to improving emotional vocabulary."