Emotional education within Service Learning experiences in primary school

The Service Learning (SL) Program promoted by Verona University (Italy) within the Master’s Degree in Primary School Education is structured as follows: with the support of the academic team, the students (pre-service teachers) develop educational projects in schools to address educational problems identified with the help of in-service teachers. Furthermore, pre-service teachers conduct qualitative research, in order to evaluate the effectiveness of the realized educational projects. In line with issues highlighted in international literature, a widespread problem in schools is children’s emotional distress and emotional illiteracy (Goleman, 1995; Mundy et al., 2017). These are phenomena with negative consequences also for the relational climate of the classroom. Encouraging pre-service teachers to ascertain the specific emotional needs within a class population and develop educational research to deal with these, significantly contributes to the development of the fourth Sustainable Goal (Quality Education). The presentation will focus on two projects of emotional education realized within different SL experiences which had the following educational purposes: a) to develop emotional self-understanding in 1st grade primary school children (6-7 y.o), by involving them in writing an emotions journal and then analysing their emotions using a vegetable metaphor (Valbusa & Mortari, 2017); b) to help 5th grade primary school children (10-11 y.o.) to learn how to manage emotions, by understanding and transforming beliefs underpinning them, on the basis of the educational interpretation of Ellis’ ABC model (Ellis, 1993; Di Pietro, 2014). Findings emerging from the qualitative research carried out by the pre-service teachers on these projects will be presented, as well as the students’ reflections on their SL experience and on the importance of emotional education to enhance education practices and contexts.