Innovación de educación emocional en el ocio educativo: el Método La Granja

Abstract

This paper presents an innovative methodology in the emotional education field, La Granja, which was developed during a summer camp celebrated in 2017 in Santa María de Palautordera (Barcelona-Spain). It is a non-formal education experience proposed to promote learning from the emotions and experiences. The main goal is to assess the effect of this method on 127 children, between 8 and 14 years of age, in terms of improving their emotional competencies, as well as their perception of the usefulness of what they have learned. It follows a pragmatic paradigm that combines data collected by different approaches. It includes the application of the Emotional Development Questionnaire (CDE-9-13 and CDE-SEC, of the GROP) before and at the end of the summer camp, plus the ad hoc survey with open questions as post-test. In the global emotional competence, as well as its five dimensions: awareness, emotional regulation, emotional autonomy, social competencies, and life and wellbeing competencies, the scores increase, after their participation in the summer camp. These differences were significant in all cases except in the last dimension. According to the lexicometric analysis and the content of the open questions, there are coincidences between both quantitative observations and the meaning given to the experience in terms of emotional competencies. The most relevant discussion and conclusions are based on the importance of reflection as a learning enhancer, the duration and intensity of the interventions and the alignment of all the resources used that interact synergistically around the achievement of the objectives, topics broadly included in the scientific literature.