Short Research Report: The impact of the Sentituz programmes on emotional competence and social climate in the classroom

Abstract

The aim of this preliminary study was to evaluate the effects of two emotional education programmes in a charter school in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain, on students’ emotional competence and the social climate in the classroom. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest repeated measures design with a control group was utilized in the study. The participants in the study were 105 students in Year 6 of primary school and Year 2 of secondary school. The Emotional Development Questionnaire (EDQ) and the Classroom Social Climate Scale (CES) were used to assess the effect of the intervention. The results indicate that the ‘Sentituz 10-12’ programme is effective in improving students’ social competence and the quality of student-teacher relationships, whereas the ‘Sentituz 12-14’ programme is effective in promoting the emotional autonomy and overall emotional competence of students. This was however, a small scale preliminary study, and further and more rigorous studies are also need in order to evaluate the impact of these two emotional education programmes. Keywords: classroom climate; social climate, social-emotional learning; emotional education; emotional competence