Emotional Intelligence and emotional education from Mayer and Salovey's model

A fascinating challenge for schools nowadays is to educate students both academically and emotionally. This challenge is |ustified by the growing number of youth prevention and development programs in Spain. Many of these programs include some emotional intelligence (EI) abilities, but they lack a theoretical and empirical framework. In this article, the authors describe current EI models. In particular, Mayer and Salovey's model and the way it measures EI abilities are explained. This is the model with greatest empirical support and, paradoxically, it is the least known in the Spanish educational field, and it can be a useful framework to conceptualise school-based EI programs.