Emotional literacy is the ability to understand ourselves and others and to be aware of, understand and to use information about the emotional states of others with competence. It includes the ability to understand, express and manage our own emotions, and respond to the emotions of others, in ways that are helpful to ourselves and others.
There is convincing evidence to suggest that developing the social and emotional competence of children and young people leads to improved well-being, self-esteem, pro-social behavior and higher achievement.
The environments that encourage emotional and social competence are:
- An enriched physical environment
- An enriched emotional environment.
We now understand that by providing these environments, together with specific training and coaching in personal and social skills, we can enable children and young people to develop emotional maturity far more effectively than we could before. Many schools believe that emotional intelligence can and must be developed because it leads to so many benefits. They are, therefore, finding ways to explicitly place emotional literacy at the heart of their approach to learning, teaching, achieving, behavior change and well-being.