On 19 and 20 July, the Vitoria Faculty of Arts hosted a workshop entitled “The Links between Health Education and Emotional Learning”, co-chaired by Maite Garaigordobil, Professor of Psychological Evaluation at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU) and a PROEM network member.
The workshop, co-organized by the UPV/EHU, the UNED Associated Center in Vitoria-Gasteiz and the Vitoria Center for Emotional Intelligence, focused on the analysis and understanding of the links between health education and emotional learning, as well as on identifying best practices in both fields, as socioeducational determinants for improving quality of life at both an individual and group level.
AOver the course of two full days, biological, psychological and social aspects were discussed, where attendees heard from speakers about a perspective of health education as a discipline and its link to emotional learning for personal development and an individual’s social adjustment. The most recent scientific advances made in areas including emotions and health, emotional intelligence and health, and the benefits of emotional learning for health and well-being were reviewed.
Maite Garaigordobil gave a talk entitled “The Effects of Emotional Learning in Primary and Secondary School Children”. She presented a series of psychoeducational intervention programmes for children and adolescents aged between 4 and 16 years aimed at promoting prosocial behaviour and emotional development, and which have been experimentally validated. Maite also presented one of her evidence-based psychoeducational intervention lines of research, which aims to promote socioemotional development. It covers four cooperative play programmes designed for children aged 4 to 12 years and a fifth programme aimed at adolescents from 12 to 16 years, which combines cooperative play with other group dynamic techniques.
The remaining speakers delved into an understanding of how our emotional life affects our health and even the ageing process, and presented educational and clinical intervention programmes aimed at improving emotional intelligence and personal well-being.
The PROEM network researcher was joined by other well-regarded professors and researchers from different universities, including Juan Carlos Pérez, workshop co-director and lecturer of Research Methods and Assessment in Education at UNED; Darío Páez and Igone Etxeberria, both from the University of the Basque Country; María del Carmen Ortega, from UNED; María Sainz, from the Complutense University of Madrid; Javier Cejudo, from the University of Castilla-La Mancha; and Rafael Bisquerra, from the University of Barcelona.
