Personal, Social, and Emotional Skills
Anxiety, fear, insecurity, aggressiveness, emotional barriers, bullying, rage, joy, surprise and sadness are a part of our daily life from childhood to adulthood. From the tenderest age we can learn how to deal with our own emotions and those of others, see the world from different points of view, which may help improve our quality of life, health, personal and professional success, which is one of the challenges of the 21st Century. It is a fact that the development of social-emotional skills combined with cognitive development is the key to success in school and throughout life, as shown in Emotional Intelligence (Goleman, 2010; Damásio, 2011).
Motta and Aguiar (2007) indicate that being competent is having the capacity to apply skills, knowledge and behaviour. The ability to use knowledge to achieve a purpose, the capacity of using knowledge and skills acquired in one’s profession and the capacity to mobilise knowledge such as know-how, know how to be and know how to act, and lastly, the capacity to solve problems.
A personal skill is an integrated and structured knowledge that an individual will have to resort to and uses in order to effectively undertake various tasks encountered throughout life, while being aware of their potential and resources as well as psychological constraints in order to be able to pursue projects in various dimensions of their existence.
It is common knowledge that emotions affect how and what we learn, that affectionate relationships are the basis for lasting education and that important skills can be taught simultaneously with the academic content. Research shows that the positive effects achieved through the development of these social skills in academic performance benefit the health of the body, improve self-image, self-concept, and self-esteem, and provide physical and mental well-being and responsible citizenship. In order to achieve success throughout life, it is essential to reduce the risk of poor adjustment, failed relationships, interpersonal violence, substance abuse and unhappiness (Elias et al., 1977; Zins, Weissberg et al., 2004).
For the World Health Organisation (WHO), health is not merely the absence of illness but a resource of our daily lives and the state of physical, psychological and social well-being of the human being. Barbosa (2002) reports that psychomotricity is directly related to education, health and well-being, which help to achieve a complete balance of the human being, and has the objective of promoting integral development.