17 Facts About Emotional literacy

Term emotional literacy has often been used in parallel to, and sometimes interchangeably with, the term emotional intelligence.

Emotional literacy was noted as part of a project advocating humanistic education in the early 1970s.

Emotional literacy is made up of 'the ability to understand your emotions, the ability to listen to others and empathise with their emotions, and the ability to express emotions productively.

Emotional literacy improves relationships, creates loving possibilities between people, makes co-operative work possible, and facilitates the feeling of community.

Steiner's model of emotional literacy is therefore primarily about dealing constructively with the emotional difficulties we experience to build a sound future.

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Emotional literacy believes that personal power can be increased and relationships transformed.

In Britain, the term emotional literacy is often used and has developed, building on the work of Steiner and Goleman as a social construction – as opposed to the more individualistic 'emotional intelligence' with the attempts to measure it as if emotions were measurable in a relatively rational way.

Emotional literacy took on an aspect that was concern with personal growth.

Also, the development of emotional literacy was justified by arguing that its introduction would help to improve other factors such as behavior, attendance and academic achievement.

Emotional literacy pointed out that the programs tended to view pupils as individuals who are in need of development through enabling them to control their impulses.

Emotional literacy's starting point is that all social and emotional interactions take place in a cultural context and that generally all emotions are felt because of interactions with other people.

One could judge a person's emotional literacy by observing what they brought to the situation, the way they interacted and the degree to which they showed empathy, and, the recognition of "self" and "others".

Hence, according to Matthews, emotional literacy is a social process that takes place in a social setting, is something that is never really achieved, and has to be seen in conjunction with others.

Emotional literacy involves factors such as people understanding their own and others' emotional states; learning to manage their emotions and to empathize with others.

Emotional literacy involves connections between people and working with their differences and similarities while being able to handle ambiguity and contradiction.

On this view emotional literacy is developed to help people understand themselves, others and the power connections between them.

Emotional literacy is not just to be "nice", but to know when to stand up for viewpoints and fight for a case.