The Organization of the United Nations for Education, Science, and Culture (UNESCO) recommends incorporating Socioemotional Education into educational policies and showcases the Spanish program ‘En sus zapatos’ as a model.
The guide ‘Incorporation of social and emotional learning in educational systems: Public policy guide’ collects the benefits of these learnings in educational policies, highlighting successful models from various social and cultural contexts such as Sub-Saharan Africa, Spain, Colombia, South Korea, China, India, Tanzania, and Uruguay.
In Spain, the program ‘En sus zapatos: An active empathy space’ by the Association Teatro de Conciencia stands out, created by the anthropologist and political scientist Pax Dettoni Serrano and incorporated into the continuous training of teachers in the Community of Madrid since 2018.
UNESCO explains that this program aims to prevent violence, bullying, and build a culture of peace and coexistence through Emotional Education for the entire school, using play and theater as main tools.
It also points out that the innovation of ‘En sus zapatos’ lies in the focus on school coexistence and the prevention of bullying through emotional literacy with consciousness theater, an innovative, effective, and pedagogically strong methodology to strengthen emotional literacy to prevent violence and promote harmonious coexistence.
«Through the use of theater and play, empathy and compassion are experienced and worked on with the entire educational community. Another innovative and successful aspect of the project is the creation of didactic posters, stories, and manuals to reinforce learning,» the guide states.
UNESCO also acknowledges that the work carried out in close collaboration with the Community of Madrid «is key not only to reach the largest number of schools but also to consolidate a de facto social commitment to the construction of a culture of peace.»
In addition to the Community of Madrid, the Association Teatro de Conciencia has implemented this method in other Spanish regions in collaboration with teacher resource centers from different provinces, such as Avilés, Cáceres, Barcelona, or La Coruña.
Currently, it has been implemented in over 130 schools throughout Spain, reaching over 120,000 individuals (students aged 4 to 17, teachers, families, and non-teaching staff); bringing emotional literacy to the entire school community through three main axes: emotional recognition and management, active empathy, and positive conflict resolution.
«Socioemotional education must take the form of public policy, without a doubt, therefore it must be accompanied by systematized models that allow massive emotional literacy focused mainly on educators of the youngest (teachers and families), who will later be the leaders of our societies. This is how we work, non-profit, and in collaboration with the Public Sector from our Association,» points out the director of the Association Teatro de Conciencia and creator of the program «En Sus Zapatos.»
The results of the international evaluation conducted on the program by the University of Utrecht (Netherlands), experts from the Carlos III University (Madrid), and with the collaboration of the INE (National Institute of Statistics of Spain), reflect that, with this methodology, for example, 92% of participants learn to recognize and identify their emotions, or 90% of teachers believe that students are more willing to forgive, listen, and be empathetic, and among other significant data showing the relationship between the improvement of emotional literacy with the improvement of coexistence and the decrease in school violence.
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