Critical aspects in the field of education are currently related to low levels of socioemotional competences and high rates of school dropouts. However, there are no standard practices or guidelines for helping countries to assess and train social and emotional competences. To overcome this limitation, the project Learning to be (L2B) aims to propose a comprehensive model of the assessment and development of social and emotional competences that bring together policymakers, researchers, teachers, school authorities and learners from different participating countries: Finland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain. The project attempts to create an international framework for regulating activities and supporting teachers working on the social and emotional competences of the students and to provide tools which can be used across countries. The aim of the paper is to describe how L2B has been developed in Spain by analyzing the contributions of the international framework and extracting the specific needs in the Spanish context. Specifically, we describe two products of the project: (a) the process for creating a toolkit, a tool focused on creating activities and materials for helping teachers develop social and emotional competences of students and (b) the results of an exploratory study in Spain in which social and emotional competences are assessed and compared to the international framework. First, we explain the definition of social and emotional competences used for creating the toolkit. Second, we analyze responses of Spanish students to questionnaires administered before applying the toolkit in the schools. The paper describes social and emotional competences in Spain and evaluates the overlap between relevant variables in Spain and those used for developing the toolkit, the international tool. Specific needs in Spain are discussed, as well as the contribution of the project for promoting the improved development of students’ social and emotional competences, improving learning outcomes and stronger social cohesion in schools and local communities, as well as the utility of the results for creating new educational policies.
People, through their bodily actions, engage in sensorimotor loops that connect them to the world and to their own bodies. People's brains integrate the incoming sensory information to form mental representations of their body appearance and capabilities. Technology provides exceptional opportunities to tweak sensorimotor loops and provide people with different experiences of their bodies. We recently showed that real-time sound feedback on one's movement (sonic avatar) can be
Music and Talent" is an educational project for children between 3 and 9 years old. The aim of the project is to use music and musical intelligence as resources for enhancing important skills in social and cognitive development. These skills are self-esteem, self-confidence, motivation, social and emotional relationships, and well-being. The first part of the article describes the project's foundation, organization and developed activities. The second part of the article presents the results of two exploratory studies that have been carried out to evaluate some of the developed activities. Study 1 measured the impact of an active music language learning methodology on the "originality" dimension of creativity. A quasi-experimental design was adopted, with experimental and control groups tested pre and post the musical intervention. Findings show a statistically significant increase in the originality dimension in the experimental group. Study 2 measured the children's self-efficacy in relation to their participation in the Music and Talent project, with positive results. An exploratory study was adopted as the research design, using a validated 10 steps Likert questionnaire with 15 items.
Sound from media increases the immersion of the audience in the story, adding credibility to the narration but also generating emotions in the spectator. A study on children aged 9-13 years (N = 253), using an audio story, investigated the emotional impact of arousal vs. neutral treatment of sound and 3D vs. stereo mix spatialization. The emotional impact was measured combining three different measures: physiological (Electrodermal activity), self-report (pre-post exposition), and richness of mental images elicited by the story (using Think-aloud technique after exposition). Results showed higher emotional impact of the arousal and 3D audio conditions with different patterns according to the age of the participants and distinctive types of interaction when both variables were combined.
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