Acceso usuarios
Lérida, España
Desarrollar las competencias emocionales desde edades tempranas tiene numerosos beneficios en las relaciones entre iguales, el rendimiento académico, en la autoestima y en el aumento de estrategias para resolver conflictos de manera asertiva. La consciencia emocional permite poner nombre a las emociones experimentadas y actúa como predictora de la regulación emocional en edades más avanzadas. Asimismo, la capacidad verbal de los niños y niñas está relacionada con el conocimiento que poseen de las emociones. La vivencia de la tristeza ha aumentado a raíz de la COVID-19 y se trata de una emoción que tiende a ocultarse en la infancia, pero se experimenta frecuentemente en la adolescencia, especialmente por las chicas. Por todo ello, este estudio busca conocer el bagaje de vocabulario emocional respectivo a la familia de la tristeza en 823 estudiantes españoles de las etapas educativas obligatorias: educación primaria (6 a 12 años) y secundaria (12 a 16 años). Además, se profundiza en las diferencias respecto al curso escolar y género, por lo que se realiza una comparación de medias que incluyen los efectos interactivos y un análisis post-hoc. Los resultados de la etapa de la educación primaria muestran diferencias significativas para la variable curso y se encuentran diferencias, también significativas, en la educación secundaria para las variables curso y género, además de interesantes diferencias intragrupos. Por todo ello, se subraya que al abordar la educación emocional desde las aulas, se legitima y naturaliza la expresión de las diferentes emociones, hecho que repercute de manera directa en el bienestar de los alumnos y alumnas.
Emotions play an important adaptive role. They prepare us to react to relevant changes in the context and transmit information quickly and efficiently. Developing emotional skills from an early age improves peer-to-peer relationships, academic performance, self-esteem, and assertive strategies to resolve conflicts. Emotional awareness is recognized as the basic competence because it consists of label the emotions we are experiencing and predicting emotional regulation in older stages. Likewise, children’s verbal capacity is directly related to the knowledge of emotions they have. Sadness is one of the primary emotions whose experience has increased because of COVID-19. It is felt due to the loss of something important and is associated with a low level of serotonin. It is generally accompanied by a general drop in mood. Unlike other emotions, sadness usually has less reactivity and presents characteristic physiological features such as paleness, drooping eyelids, sunken lips, and slow, uninterrupted breathing by deep sighs. Previous studies have shown the relevant role of age in recognizing, labeling emotions, and understanding their ambivalence. Since cognitive development advances as age does, it is around the age of ten when the simultaneity of two or more emotions begins to be understood. Sadness is usually more frequent and intense in adolescence than in other stages of life, due to the great neurobiological and social changes that young people experience. In addition, psychosocial demands and periods of school transition may affect mood. From the age of 13, emotional well-being decreases, and some adolescents find it difficult to regulate their sadness and end up expressing it in maladaptive ways. In the case of adolescent girls, they experience sadness with higher intensity and frequency. For all these reasons, this study seeks to know the baggage of emotional vocabulary related to the family of sadness which includes emotions such as depression, frustration, disappointment, grief, despair, melancholy, or worry. The sample of this study consists of 823 Spanish students of the mandatory educational stages: primary education (from 6 to 12 years old) and secondary education (from 12 to 16 years old). The results were collected during the 2019/2020 and 2020/2021 academic years, coinciding with the health contingency caused by COVID-19. The data analysis was carried out with the software JASP 0.16 30. In addition, the differences regarding the grade and gender are deepened by 3 comparing means (ANOVA) related to the hypothesis. They include the interactive effects and a post-hoc analysis to explore in which grades the differences are produced.
The results of the primary stage show significant differences for the grade variable, more concisely between 1st year and the rest of the primary grades, explained by the development of children's early literacy skills. Significant differences are also found between 2nd and 3rd grade and 3rd and 4th grade, understood since explanations about the emotions that are felt will be more complex at older ages. Significant grade differences are found in secondary education, located between 1st and 4th grade.
First-year students are in a time of academic transition that can affect mood and self-concept. Unlike in the primary stage, in secondary education gender is significant.
This difference could be mediated by the effect of social roles regarding emotions, such as girls tend to experience sadness and boys to experience anger. For all these reasons, it is emphasized that addressing emotional education from the classroom legitimizes and naturalizes the expression of different emotions, a fact that has a direct impact on the well-being of students. For future research, it would be interesting to carry out a longitudinal study that aims to analyze the development of the emotional vocabulary of the same subjects as they age.
emotion, education, vocabulary, gender, grade
