Coexistence at school and socio-emotional skills in pre-school students

Introduction. The present study examined the effect that the application of a program on Emotional Intelligence had on the socioemotional competence and school coexistence of students in early childhood education. Method. A quasi-experimental pretest-posttest study was conducted with a non-equivalent control group. The sample consisted of 346 subjects, 173 5-year-old students and 173 parents from four schools in the town of Lorca (Murcia). The annual Emotional Intelligence Program "EMOTI" (Hurtado and Salas, 2019) was applied, and a questionnaire for students on social competence and another for families on school coexistence. Data analysis was performed using the SPSS statistical package (version 25.0). Results. The results show that the students in the experimental group to which the program was applied manifested less aggressive behaviors so they improved in social competence and better ability to express and regulate their emotions, which had an impact on an improvement in school coexistence. Discussion and conclusions. The present study is one of the first works developed in a sample of kindergarten students in which the effect of a program on Emotional Intelligence and its effect on the improvement of social competence and school coexistence is analyzed.