Summary

In recent years, the importance of adequate emotional management has become established in educational language, in an application of Emotional Intelligence to the field of education. In fact, the term “Emotional Education” has been successfully coined. This is a new and key concept in teaching focused on students as a complement for intellectual contents, both as an independent or transversal subject.

In fact, emotions have a substantial influence on the cognitive processes in humans, including perception, attention, learning, memory, reasoning, and problem solving. Emotion has a particularly strong influence on attention, especially modulating the selectivity of attention as well as motivating action and behavior. This attentional and executive control is intimately linked to learning processes, as intrinsically limited attentional capacities are better focused on relevant information. Emotion also facilitates encoding and helps retrieval of information efficiently.

There is vast literature about emotions and teaching, but what about adult training? Nowadays, teachers are trained in emotional skills and EI is included in most curricula, but the topic is out of discussion in adult training. Trainers and facilitators need to be trained as well as a basic element of the chain. So, Emotional Intelligence is currently a hot topic in adult training, particularly taking into account the specific issues of andragogy (adult education) and the particular needs and demands of adult learners, very different from those of children. This is why this project is necessary, because much has been written about EI and pedadogy, but few about its implications in the never ending process of lifelong learning.

SESKAT’s vision is to have a positive impact on the perception and awareness of social and emotional skills in the adult training process, improving the trainers’ capacities and the quality of the training, as well as their impact on the final beneficiaries. Summing up, understanding Emotional Intelligence enhances personal success as a facilitator, because the professional will be endowed with such important skills in the actual labor market. Knowing your emotional barometer can reveal much to you about your style of facilitation and how you deal with your clients, how well you tolerate stress, handle change, express your emotions, and interact with others are all influenced by EI. As you develop your own Emotional Intelligence skill set, you will be able to help your clients increase their chances to become better employees. This is the aim of SESKAT project, an analysis and training system in Emotional Intelligence for a new generation of facilitators.

Target groups