Emotional literacy program (ELP) – How to improve learning for well-being

Abstract

This paper describes the Emotional Literacy Program (ELP) of the main project titled: “Promoting changes in learning - School Communities of Learning Gulbenkian XXI". The main purpose of this project is to promote the quality of student’s learning and their well-being, reflected through the quality of their school results, and manifests itself through the acquisition of basic knowledge within the formal curriculum and reasoning abilities (analytical reasoning, practical reasoning and creativity), resilience and responsibility. The main focus is the unique and the full potential of each student, a compromise between the basic pillars of knowledge and the fundamental pillars of citizenship in order to improve a culture of well-being. This project are implemented in three basic schools from the Portuguese Educational System, namely the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grade, and it starts with cohorts of students of the 3rd grade. The pilot program start in academic year 2014-2015 and it expires in July 2018, involving seven classes, in three groups of schools; 79 boys and 72 girls (median of age =9 years old). ELP is designed to promote emotion regulation, empathy and responsible decision making, and it is focalized in identification of basics emotions: joy, fear, sadness, surprise, anger, disgust, and explanation of these emotions in a story “The master of his nose”, from Álvaro Magalhães.