Colombian classrooms are characterized by the diversity of their students, in which peer pressure and academic demands become commonplace. School interactions can sometimes become tense and lead to disruptive behavior, resulting in situations that negatively affect the school environment, such as aggression, bullying, and cyberbullying.
For this reason, classrooms must continue to be transformed into spaces of care, protection, and development for students. Integrating social-emotional skills training into academic curricula has a positive impact on academic and professional success, contributing significantly to the comprehensive development of students.
This study was developed with the objective of designing a psychoeducational strategy based on the promotion of social-emotional skills in secondary school students. To achieve the planned objective, mixed research was implemented. Quantitatively, BarOn's Emotional Intelligence Inventory was administered to 200 participants between the ages of 12 and 18, which allows for the determination of emotional intelligence quotient and the evaluation of four scales: interpersonal, intrapersonal, adaptability, and stress management. Qualitatively, 25 students were randomly selected to participate in the psychoeducational strategy based on workshops in which narratives, artistic expressions of emotions, and thought inventories were collected.
The results obtained indicate that 34.9% of the participants tend to have low levels of emotional intelligence. These data indicate a low capacity to feel happy and optimistic, as well as low social and emotional capacity at the intrapersonal level.
Through psychoeducational intervention, it became clear that the predominant emotion among participants was anger. The workshops developed by the students reflected stressful situations they experience within the school context, mainly related to academic workload, difficulties in communicating with their family support network, especially with their mothers, and few opportunities to identify and reframe their emotional states and thoughts in the educational context and at home. Evidencing the need to create environments for expressing and validating emotions