SOCIO-EMOTIONAL SKILLS: DEVELOPMENT, EXAMPLES AND ACTIVITIES - GEOGRAFÍA - 2025

The socio - emotional skills are learned behaviors that we perform when we interact with people around us, through the expression of our feelings, attitudes, rights or opinions. Examples of these are empathy, self-awareness or self-control.

Thus, a person with optimal socio-emotional skills will show skill when it comes to relating and behaving appropriately according to certain objectives in various situations.

In this article, I am going to show you some of the most important social-emotional skills and how to develop them, with an emphasis on the school environment at an early age, since the sooner these skills are established, the person will grow more optimally.

Within the socio-emotional skills there are basic skills (listening, starting a conversation, asking a question, thanking, introducing yourself, etc.) and more developed skills (taking initiatives, making decisions, setting goals or solving problems according to their importance, among others).

In order to develop the latter, it is necessary to begin with training to acquire the former.

Socio-emotional skills in the child

The socio-emotional skills in children focus on their adaptation to the family, school, more direct environment, etc.

The first years are key to cementing the personality of the person, so if the appropriate capacities are not developed to adapt to the social environment, it is most likely that it will result in an individual with low self-esteem and with problems to relate.

Self-control, assertive communication, conflict resolution or empathy are some of the capacities and emotions that the family and the educational system must manage in children to become an individual adapted to society.

It should be noted that until a few decades ago, in the school environment the intellectual aspects prevailed over the socio-emotional ones, the latter being practically non-existent. There was the concept that the formative success of a person was to develop his cognitive system.

In the 21st century, pedagogical methods more focused on social skills have been gaining prominence.

Examples of socio-emotional skills

Group collaboration is a socio-emotional skill

Self-knowledge

This concept refers to knowing what we are feeling at each moment, making realistic evaluations in relation to our own abilities and recognizing our strengths, limitations and having a connection with our own feelings. In this way, we will be realistic when setting our objectives.

Social conscience

It is the understanding that others are also feeling and being able to adopt their different perspectives, getting to interact positively with various groups. It is knowing that we are not alone and that just as we have rights, we also have duties.

This competence includes learning to identify and understand the thoughts and feelings of others and understand that thanks to diversity, complementarity in society is possible.

Empathy

It is the ability to put yourself in the shoes of others and experience the emotions that others are experiencing.

Assertive communication

It is the style of communication by which the person respects himself and his rights, at the same time as he does with others.

Resilience

It is the ability to recover from difficult, stressful or traumatic events. For example, a child who regains her physical and mental energy after going through the divorce of her parents.

Perseverance

It is the ability to continue acting to achieve medium or long-term goals. You persevere when you do not have desired results, but still you continue to act to try to achieve the desired goal.

Collaboration

It is about the ability to coordinate with other people to achieve a common goal. For example, you can collaborate with a group of people to achieve a peaceful coexistence within a community.

Self-management

Identify our emotions and use them as facilitating factors of the activities that we intend to carry out and not that they act as interference. Learn to be aware of the need to delay rewards to achieve certain goals and develop the perseverance to tolerate frustration and difficulties.

In this competition, learning to manage emotions is important as well as setting short and long-term goals and working towards their achievement.

Responsible decision making

For this competence it is essential to teach the child to accurately assess risks. Knowing how to make decisions taking into account all the relevant factors, as well as assessing the possible consequences of alternative actions, assuming responsibility for each action and respecting the other.

Sometimes making decisions is not an easy task, since doubting about the most appropriate option can produce feelings of anguish.

Personal relationship skills

Make use of emotions to carry out effective, healthy and reinforcing relationships that are based on cooperation. Resistance to inappropriate social pressures. Negotiate solutions to conflicts and learn to ask for help when needed.

To do this, the child will be taught the use of verbal and non-verbal skills to communicate with others and to build healthy relationships with other people and / or groups. In this competition it is also important to teach the subject of negotiation in order to resolve conflicts in which both parties benefit.

How to develop socio-emotional skills at school?

One of the essential environments for the development of socio-emotional skills is educational, since these skills must be started at an early age.

Social integration

Education has as its main function the social adaptation of the individual. This entails fostering their integration into society through socialization, through which each subject, through interaction with others, develops various ways of feeling, thinking, and acting that are essential for proper participation in society.

Currently, in developed societies there are continuous changes that require continuous readjustment of the individual. For this reason, it is of vital importance to develop the adaptability of the individual and flexibility of the subjects in order to be able to mold ourselves according to the needs that arise.

However, in relation to the inclusion of the development of social-emotional skills and emotional intelligence in school, it must be taken into account that the resources we have at school as well as the time that children spend in it are limited.

Develop skills

There are two options to focus on to work on skills:

• Adjust ourselves to the needs of a person or a specific group, to the problems they present at school, at their workplace, at home and / or on the street.
• Focus on skills that are likely to generalize to other domains and that, in turn, are important for the development of other skills.

Choosing one option or another will be guided by the demand that arises. Emotional skills training programs can be designed in a structured or semi-structured way.

In the latter, there is more possibility of giving way to improvisation, to be able to work adapting to each situation and person in particular.

Team work

Through group work on social-emotional skills, we can fully address training in general skills with exercises aimed at reducing anxiety, cognitive restructuring and solving the specific problems presented by each member of the group.

There are various emotional skills, such as planning and deliberation, control and evaluation of the course of action, which are interrelated.

If all training included these skills, improving deficiencies in these would facilitate self-knowledge on the part of the person conducting the training, as well as improving their ability to interact with others.

Some of the most important activities from an early age of the child are cooperative learning or discussion groups as a didactic methodology. This methodology provides learning in the child to interact with their peers.

Importance of socio-emotional skills

Socio-emotional skills are vital for the proper development of the individual and for relating to their environment. Thanks to these tools:

- Better control of emotions is possible. This assumes that emotional responses are not triggered (eg anxiety) or deactivated (depression).

- With good control of emotions, decision-making is carried out responsibly, avoiding risky behaviors. In addition, it helps to focus attention on the objectives.

- It helps to enrich the social environment, being this richer and healthier. This has very positive consequences such as better academic and professional performance, as well as a reduction in the chances of acquiring vices (drugs) or developing negative behaviors (violence).

- Improves self-esteem and confidence, which leads to less emotional stress.

- Causes well-being.

Activities for the development of socio-emotional skills

It is a very useful exercise consists of working all the skills. In it, the experiences that are presented to him on a daily basis and the emotions that cause him emotional discomfort (emotional diary) will be added.

Once the general skills training period is over, time is spent analyzing the various problem situations that these individuals have noted in their journals and a group approach is carried out.

Exercise to develop assertiveness

A good exercise to learn to develop assertiveness is to write in a notebook 5 things that you approve of your physical image and 5 things of your way of being that you like. If you are not able to find them yourself, you can ask friends or family.

Finally, it is about reviewing the lists and thinking that if that person knew someone with those characteristics, they would surely be delighted to meet him.

Exercise to develop effective decision making

This exercise consists of writing down some ideas about the ways in which people make decisions. Next, we reflect on the risks, advantages and disadvantages and possible consequences of each of the forms that have been indicated above.

Exercise for good social communication

A person performs good active listening when he is able to pay attention in an intentional way, with empathy knowing how to put himself in the place of the other.

To do this exercise, we will need two people. One will tell a story that is relatively important to him and the other will listen, although putting many impediments to communication: he will give advice without being asked by the speaker, he will talk to someone else while the other continues to talk to him, he will interrupt and change the subject, he will laugh without coming to mind, etc.

In a new scene, you start to tell a problem that you care to solve and the listener will do so by asking clarifying questions, letting you know that you understand, looking at your face and nodding.

Faced with these two very different situations, which one is more positive? In what situation have we implemented communication skills and active listening? With this exercise, it is intended to make the individual see the importance of effective communication.

Sandwich technique

It is considered one of the most effective techniques for improving social skills. This consists of starting the communication by focusing on a positive aspect, then continuing with an aspect that could be improved and finally ending with some encouraging words for change such as: I know that you are putting a lot of effort into changing your attitude and It shows because you have improved about it.

Messages of the "I"

Self-centered messages should be used to give our opinion or express our beliefs on an issue to the other person.

We will use them instead of making generalizations, since what is for oneself in a certain way does not have to be the same for the other because each point of view is subjective. “I think that….”, “I think that…”, “In my opinion…”.

When we carry out these competence learnings in the early ages, we grow up to be socially and emotionally competent people, with self-awareness and positive attitudes both towards ourselves and towards others.

So the sooner social-emotional skills are worked on, the sooner they will develop and benefit in the life of each individual.

In this way, we will know our strengths and grow optimistic about our future. We will be able to manage our emotions and achieve our objectives and goals and solve problems effectively and responsibly.

References

1. Zins, JE, Elias, MJ, Greenberg, M. T and Weissberg, RP (2000). Promoting social and emotional competence in children. In K. Minke and G. Bear (Eds.), Preventing school problems, promoting that work (pp. 71-100). Bethesda: National Association of School Psychologists.
2. CASEL (a) (Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning). (2007). Benefits of SEL: SEL and Academics. Retrieved March 15, 2007.
3. Durlak, Joseph; Weissberg, Roger; CASEL. (2007). The Impact of After-School Programs that Promote Personal and Social Skills. Chicago, IL, USA. Retrieved May 20, 2007.
4. Lickona, Thomas. (1992). Educating for Character: How Our Schools can Teach Respect and Responsibility. Batan Books, New York, USA.
5. Shields, A., Dickstein, S., Seifer, R., Guisti, L., Magee KD, & Spritz, B. (2001). Emotional competence and early school adjustment: A study of preschoolers at risk. Early Education and Development, 12, 73-96.