Emotional Education in the Formation of Adolescents: An Exploratory Research Study

This article is the result of exploratory research on the partial implementation of the Emotional Education Program for Preventing Violence (PEEPV, in Spanish) in two schools of different socioeconomic profiles, in the city of Recife, Brazil. PEEPV was designed with a view to improving the integrality of the formation of adolescents enrolled in compulsory regular education in Spain. Based on the experience of this Program in its home country, it was assumed that PEEPV could likewise contribute to the integral formation of adolescents in compulsory regular education in Brazil. In each school, a control group and an intervention group were set up, the performance of both of which was measured by using a five-point, 40-item Likert scale, with subscales designed to assess the following concepts of emotional development: self-knowledge, self-control, self-motivation, empathy and social skills. 643 questionnaires were applied. The T-type test of Means was used with independent samples, which refer to the moments before and after the intervention. The results showed no evidence that there had been any emotional-relational development regarding the above concepts. Despite these results, they show that there is a significant difference between the two schools that are of different socioeconomic strata, which raises the need for further research on the relationship between the concepts of habitus and cultural capital of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and the skills that Emotional Education seeks to develop.


Introduction
This article is one of the partial results of research carried out from 2011 to 2015, which sought to adapt and partially apply the Program of Emotional Education for the Prevention of Violence (PEEPV), authored by Augustín Vañó (2005) and collaborators, to two groups of adolescents from the last two years of junior high school 1 , in two public schools that serve groups of distinct socio-economic profiles (one of a middle social stratum and the other of a low-income stratum), and to examine the results of this application in order to decide at a later date on the desirability of translating PEEPV into Portuguese and to be able to implement it in Brazilian schools, since the problem of violence at school is also an everyday phenomenon in Brazil.
PEEPV was designed in Spain to be applied to adolescents in the 12-16 year-old age group in order to prevent violence among young people by means of forming their inner being, especially by tackling their emotional and relational formation. In particular, this program is based on the understanding that violence stems largely from the inability of a human being to regulate the inner forces that inhabit his/her psyche and to become, as a result of such inability, a victim of primitive impulsive states which because he/she is unable to express him/herself in a manner that fits into and is consistent with all dimensions of personal being, they tend to burst out in acts of violence against those close to them and, consequently, against the integrity of the very person who engages on them.
Although emotional and relational formation is a well-established area of research and formation in some countries such as the USA and Spain - (Cohen, 1999(Cohen, , 2006, (Elias et al., 1997), (Elias & Butler, 2005), ( Bar-On & Parker, 2000), (Bar-On, Maree, Elias, 2007), (Goleman, 1995), (Alzina, Pérez González, Navarro, 2015) -this is not yet true in Brazil. Thus, not only does this area lack sufficient legitimacy to be included in the positions and guidelines that structure the educational field (Policarpo Junior, 2014), but it does not leverage policy strength to be part of the formation of faculty in colleges and institutions of higher education of teacher formation, nor, consequently, is it included as a curricular component in Brazilian public schools.
Despite the Brazilian educational field being framed in this way, we are aware that the foundations and goals of emotional education are no strangers to the history of classical educational thought -as we can see in the broad lines of the Greek Paideia (Jaeger, 2001), as well as in the reflections of its most important philosophers, such as Aristotle (Ét. Nic., I -II) -nor in recent educational history, as attested by Gardner's (1995) intra-and interpersonal intelligences, and the great regulatory ideas of learning to know, to do, to be and to live together which have been set out and analyzed by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization [UNESCO] (Delors et al., 2003;UNESCO, 1972; UNESCO -Asia Pacific Network for International Education and Values Education [APNIEVE], 1998[APNIEVE], , 2002[APNIEVE], , 2005.
Thus, although the authors of this research are aware and convinced of the pertinence and conceptual, theoretical and historical propriety of the intended formation, and consider it fully fit for the regular school system, they are equally aware that the subject does not yet enjoy sufficient recognition for it to be accepted and valued in the school curriculum, much less to be recognized as legitimate by agents of the Brazilian educational system. For these and other reasons, the authors of this paper were aware of the possibility that the planned intervention could contain obstacles that could, in the end, impede or hinder the success of the initiative analyzed here. Nevertheless, the authors considered it relevant to seek conceptual, curricular and methodological elements that could contribute towards solving concrete educational problems, such as violence at school in Brazil, even if these elements have not yet been sufficiently legitimized in the Brazilian educational field -this was one of the main reasons for undertaking the research that has given rise to this article. Therefore, our hypothesis admitted that PEEPV-based educational intervention could contribute to the emotional education of adolescents in two Brazilian public schools of different social backgrounds. The results achieved, for reasons presented throughout the paper, did not confirm this hypothesis, but they did raise important questions about the relationship between emotional development and socioeconomic origin, the analysis of which requires further research.
Given the foregoing, this article is organized into the following sections, besides this introduction: (2) a synthesis of the idea of human formation and its relationship with emotional education; (3) general characteristics of PEEPV and its main concepts; (4) a discussion of the methodology used; (5) the presentation and discussion of the results of our research; and (6) a discussion of conclusions drawn and final remarks including suggestions for future lines of research.

Human formation and its relationship with emotional education
It is commonplace for there to be the understanding that a human being is born incomplete and requires formation. What, however, should be the nature of such a formation? Should it be solely dependent on the meaning that each society goes about erecting as culture? What should be considered formative and what is the criterion for this being so? Such reflections have already been extensively developed by many different authors including Van Kaam (1989), Röhr (2013), Policarpo Junior (2018), and Ximenes (2013. We synthesize, however, our own understanding here, which was also determined in dialogue with the authors cited.
We initially understand human formation as derived from what properly constitutes the human. On the other hand, it is not easy to be able to assimilate this statement in the academic field due to the philosophical-anthropological assumptions and implications to which it relates. On the one hand, there is the understanding that seems hegemonic in the academic field that little can be said of the human being, inasmuch as humans are said to be devoid of a nature of their own. Such a position, therefore, points to the understanding that a human being is considered to be a kind of entity endowed with the widest plasticity, such that it is impossible for anyone to identify his/her own being. On the other hand, there is the position present in various philosophies and theologies that started in Antiquity and continues today that aims to define a stable and permanent nature of the human being in spite of all the historical changes. One could also identify a third position that may occasionally be associated with the first, which is the deliberate abstention from dealing with such a matter given that it is as a metaphysical question for which any statement is said to lack an identifiable basis.
Our position does not coincide with any of those just set out above. We consider, on the one hand, that the human being does indeed have a constitutive nature and one by which he/she can be identified; but, on the other hand, this nature does change historically, but not at the speed of the social and cultural changes, although part of the human constitution is also cultural and social. Thus, and summarizing our position, we regard the human being as an entity of Nature, society, the world, and culture, as well as a personal being. Each of these aspects presents its respective formative demands that are neither fixed nor determined, but neither are they arbitrary, nor are they endowed with infinite plasticity. Let us look briefly at each of these aspects and their repercussions for human formation.
As a being of Nature, a human being is placed under laws that structure his/her biological-somatic dimension and, in certain aspects, also his/her psychic condition. Some aspects of such laws are undeniable, such as: humans need oxygen to breathe; the average temperature of the human body should be around 36°C; one´s glucose, fat and other chemical levels must be within certain limits, otherwise one will fall sick and die. The human body -within certain limits that vary from person to person, but are nonetheless not infinitely flexible -also needs, for its proper functioning, some kind of frequent exercise and a balanced diet lest diseases and mal-functioning develop. From this it follows that giving attention and taking care of the somatic and organic aspects is not an arbitrary attitude, but, on the contrary, perfectly matched to the intrinsic characteristics of human beings.
The same reasoning applies to the psychic dimension, although here the laws are less evident than in the somatic aspect. Meanwhile, ever since the work of Freud, one cannot ignore that there are psychic structures nor fail to recognise that there are psychopathologies resulting from repressions, restraints and complexes that are structured throughout socialization, which commonly produce great personal and relational suffering of the particular subject.
Here too it follows that the idea of psychic formation and care is grounded in the very nature of this constitutive aspect of what it means to be human.
With regard to this dimension, emotional education becomes all the more relevant, because it is in this context that the singular human being is called to enter conscious contact with his/her impulses and aggressive and narcissistic tendencies, in order to recognize them, to be able to regulate them and not to act under their dominion. Just on account of this, it can already be recognized that emotional education is legitimized by the very constitution of the human being who requires appropriate formation.
In tight connection with the psychic aspect, a human being lives in society and inhabits a world. We speak of "tight connection" because all our action is motivated in one way or another. It is by the intermediary means of action, which in turn arises from psychic mediations, that we manifest ourselves in the world. In other words, it is by such action that we appear to others. However, it is not rare for our action to be dominated by primitive psychic forces that are not regulated by consciousness, leading to results that generally are catastrophic.
Society is founded -which is a commonplace for anyone who is familiar with the concepts of sociology and psychology -on the tacit admission that not all desires and drives can be socially and culturally accepted in the primitive and almost omnipotent form in which they appear originally in the psychic arena. Society itself -by means of interpersonal and impersonal relationships that structure the coexistence between human beings and the symbolic-imaginary order that emerges from them -penetrates the psychic structure and is represented there with the demands regarding what is considered legitimate and illegitimate in coexistence among human beings. Life in society, an indispensable condition for a human being to assert him/herself as such, imposes as an indispensable condition, the minimum formation of the psychic dimension, although there are also not a few situations in which society is structured in order to produce total anti-human conditions as history proves to us abundantly, examples of which include various cruel and totalitarian systems that have existed and still exist.
Social life also shapes a world of coexistence, which is made up of all the constructions that are intended to be durable in order to endow social life with a human sense. This is how culture, based on conscious initiatives, emerges as an explicit set of actions aimed at cultivating the human spirit, thereby seeking to discipline savagery and establish the coexistence of beings in their plurality.
Finally, in this comprehensive conception of the human being which we present here in synthesis, this being is a personal being; this means, among other things, that, despite all the patterns that characterize the human being as a social being and a being of Nature, he/she also affirms him/herself in their uniqueness. To exercise one's unique character in an integrated, meaningful, nonviolent way with others is an art; it is the fruit of a personal learning that depends on and requires the personal appropriation of various general skills and abilities, but transcends them in order to find expression uniquely in an individual's life.
In the light of this conception, emotional education fully emerges even although some authors' views on what this concept means varies (Goleman, 1995;Mayer & Salovey, 1997;Mota, 2010;Cordeiro, Policarpo Jr., Mota, Wanderley, 2014) and is made legitimate as a fundamental aspect of human formation because it is anchored in one of the aspects that intrinsically constitute the being on whom such formation is targeted. Emotional education is not, therefore, in any shape or form, foreign to education, but is rather an integral part of the educational desideratum that unfolds from the intrinsic constitution of the human, insofar as it targets that a human being has become familiar with his/her impulses, aggressiveness, longing to relate to others and has been endowed with the necessary skills to coexist among human beings in the world of plurality, in an integrated and non-violent way with him/herself and others.

Characteristics of PEEPV
The Program of Emotional Education for Preventing Violence -PEEPV (Vañó, 2005) is one of the publications of the Centro de Formación, Innovación y Recursos Educativos (CEFIRE), located in Elda, Alicante province, Community of Valencia, Spain. PEEPV, which was developed by a group of educators concerned with incidents of school violence, aims, among other matters, to minimize such incidents and enhance a more peaceful and healthy coexistence among adolescents attending schools by engaging on emotional education. PEEPV is characterized by a preventive approach, which promotes cooperative attitudes, analyzes experiences and engenders the exercise of responsibility in order to generate a nonviolent culture.
PEEPV seeks to promote the development and/or strengthening of the following emotional skills: self-knowledge, self-motivation, social skills, empathy and self-control. Such skills are based on Mayer and Salovey (1997), Gardner (1995) and Goleman (1995), among other authors.
Self-knowledge is related to the perception and understanding of one's own emotions and those of others, which lets one become familiar with one's own psychic dynamics, recognize challenging interpersonal contexts and identify emotional triggers. Such ability directly contributes to the strengthening of self-control.
Self-motivation refers to the ability to direct one's energies toward a chosen purpose, which implies being able to face up to challenges and difficulties. In turn, the realization of such a capacity directly contributes to the strengthening of self-esteem, insofar as the particular subject sees that he/she is able to accomplish what has been proposed.
Social skills involve the ability to communicate sensibly and competently by using verbal and nonverbal expressions with a view to establishing coherent interpersonal relationships. In adolescence in particular, this ability favors the emergence of leaders who are able both to engage in conflict reconciliation activities and to promote goals and productive performance by groups. Empathy is characterized by the ability to understand another person's attitudes, gestures, and habits in relation to that person's current state of mind. In school, in particular, such competence can prevent misinterpretations that result in aggression.
Finally, self-control, which presupposes self-knowledge, implies the ability to manage one's emotions, which means reflecting before acting impulsively, restraining an aggressive attitude, reorganizing one's own forces and directing them to another mode of action, this being a matter that connects with self-motivation.
All the skills described point to the integrated development of the particular subject in his/her thoughts, feelings and actions, in a way that cannot be separated from the self and matches, as far as possible, experience in the context in which he/she lives. Vañó (2005) also states that the effectiveness of an emotional education program consists of helping children, adolescents and young people to minimize their degree of anxiety and, thus, to develop their awareness of emotional states, and promote the verbalization of their feelings so that people can recognize conflicts and thereby create solutions to these conflicts and learn to plan for situations that avoid conflict.
PEEPV consists of forty activities that are structured with the following items: (a) title, (b) objectives to be achieved, (c) emotional competencies worked on in the activity, (d) description of the activity, (e) duration of the activity, (f) group structure used, (g) methodology, (h) resources required, (i) details for the application, (j) justification of its inclusion in the PEEPV. Each activity uses a specific methodology, although there are common aspects among them, especially carrying out group work, and participants sharing ideas and experiences.
Considering the time allotted to the intervention in our research, we were unable to conduct all forty activities. We, therefore, selected fourteen of them that covered the five competencies already mentioned. The activities selected as they are named in PEEPV and their objectives are summarized in Table 1. Help reflect on the most important personal qualities so as to be able to cope with life more easily. Improve self-concept to stimulate self-esteem and self-motivation. 5. Walking through the wood Stimulate self-motivation by discovering one's own qualities. Encourage knowledge of oneself and others. Encourage the positive evaluation of others. Improve the group's confidence and communication. 6. Anger, aggressiveness, aggression Provide a definition of aggressiveness, distinguish its components and analyze its origin. Explain and identify in a practical way the mechanism that triggers aggressiveness. Personally assess the usefulness of aggression by identifying its short and long-term advantages and disadvantages.

Aggression
Take on board a situation where someone is physically hurt by others, unfairly. Encourage intragroup communication about different and possible perspectives vis-à-vis this conflict. Analyze various problem-solving techniques, different ways to respond to aggression. Expressions of emotions enacted in role play.

A conflict situation
Develop the ability to reflect on a moral problem. Develop respect for the opinions and emotions of other colleagues. Encourage the ability to express one's own decisions appropriately in order to resolve conflict. 9. The way I am Stimulate self-motivation by using self-affirmation and self-esteem.
10. The three Rs (Resentment, requirement, recognition) Learn to control the manifestation of feelings. Learn to express grievances in a socially skillful and acceptable way.

Killer phrases
Exercise the development of communicative skills. Learn to speak up for oneself. Avoid attributing one's opinions, feelings or ideas to others. Teach the student with "I MESSAGES" that are facilitating and persuasive versus "YOU MESSAGES" that provoke rejection and label people. 12. Reading one's thoughts Stimulate empathy. Develop self-control. Develop social skills.

Rejection
Examine a situation where someone is rejected and undervalued by male/female friends by analyzing the feelings underlying this situation. Reflect on different problem-solving techniques and different ways of responding to rejection. Encourage empathy for malefemale friends who are rejected or marginalized by the group. Stimulate emotional expression by using role play. 14. Group quarrels Encourage communication within the group regarding expectations or thoughts that have occurred in a conflict involving aggression. Learn resolution mechanisms in situations involving aggression, thereby reflecting on various forms of coping with them.

Method
PEEPV, in its reduced version presented in Table 1, was implemented, in exploratory terms, in two public schools in Recife, Brazil, in 2012. One of the schools, here called Clarice School (fictitious name), serves a middle-class public, since there is selection for admission, which means that children of the lower classes, with lower cultural capital (Bourdieu, 2001), do not succeed in gaining a place under such a selection process. The other, here called Maria Clara School (fictitious name), serves families on low incomes, since admittance to it is not made by selection. In both, PEEPV activities were taught to students enrolled in the last two years of junior high school. However, the duration of the intervention was different in both schools due to problems arising from a teachers' strike and distinct bureaucratic aspects. Consequently, the intervention at Maria Clara School lasted one semester, while at Clarice School it lasted for two semesters.
To evaluate the educational results of the partial administration of PEEPV, in both schools, we formed an intervention group and a control group. These groups were evaluated by applying the Emotional Education Questionnaire (QEM), presented in Table 8. At Clarice School, which had a two-semester intervention, the control group, because of its very condition, did not conduct PEEPV instruction at the first possible moment, i.e., between the first and second tests, but did do so after the second test, while the intervention group received instruction in the activities only in the period between the first and second tests, there having been no teaching of these activities for this group after this second test. In the case of this school, three tests were performed: the first at the start of the intervention, the second at the end of the first semester and the third at the end of the second semester and the end of the intervention. At Maria Clara School, however, where there was only one semester of intervention, only two tests were conducted, and the control group did not receive any intervention.

Results
Before presenting the instrument, the test used and its results, we will present a brief description of the sample analyzed, which comprised independent subsamples, since there were slight variations in the composition of each group during the tests, due to the fact that some students were present in one of the tests while they were absent from others. Therefore, the tests that will be presented below were calculated based on independent samples rather than paired samples.
At Maria Clara School, between the pre-and post-tests, 189 questionnaires were submitted to the intervention and control groups, in independent samples -therefore unpaired, since some students participated only in the first test and others only in the second. Table 2 describes the distribution of samples between the control and intervention groups at Maria Clara School. We emphasize that the approximate number of students in the intervention was 59, and that of the control group was 35 students, because most of them participated in both tests; but the samples are independent, unpaired, so the total of 189 corresponds to the number of questionnaires applied in both tests in both groups and not to the total of subjects interviewed.
At Clarice School, 454 questionnaires were submitted in the three tests performed, in the intervention and control groups, also in independent samples, for the same reasons that occurred at Maria Clara School, i.e., because there were students who were absent in one or more tests. Thus, as occurred at Maria Clara School, the number of questionnaires applied (454) does not designate the total number of students interviewed. Although we cannot provide exact figures, the intervention group had approximately 74 students (average of the three tests) and the control group had approximately 77 students. Table 3 describes the distribution of samples between control and intervention groups at Clarice School.  Test  67  71  138  2 nd Test  71  81  152  3 rd Test  85  79  164  Totals  223  231  454 Regarding the distribution by gender and age, Tables 4 to 7 show the characteristics of the samples in each of the schools; first at Maria Clara School: Then, at Clarice School: Tables 4 to 7 show that there is proximity between the age group of students of both schools, the students from Maria Clara School being slightly older than those from Clarice School, which corroborates the fact that, due to several socioeconomic factors that influence the education of low-income groups, they tend to be older than the middle-income students when they complete the schooling levels. As for the distribution between the genders, in both schools the female gender predominates.
As previously stated, the formative impact of the partial instruction of PEEPV was analyzed by setting up intervention and control groups in both schools, members of which completed the Emotional Education Questionnaire (QEM).
The QEM consists of 40 items which are scored using a five-point Likert scale; this is an update we made of the 25-item questionnaire already contained in PEEPV. The QEM items are grouped into five indices related to emotional competencies that the PEEPV aims to develop and strengthen; The five indices are: self-knowledge (Iach), self-control (Iacr), self-motivation (Iamv), social skills (Ihs), empathy (Iem). The abbreviations are those used in Portuguese.
The criterion used to validate the items was Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, with a positive and statistically significant correlation (i.e., with a p-value less than the significance level α = 0.05) of each of them and the mean of all items that constitute the index. After validating the items, we conducted an internal consistency test of each index, for which we used, as a parameter, Cronbach's alpha test with a value equal to or greater than 0.6, which is considered satisfactory for the humanities (Moroco;Garcia-Marques, 2006). To perform these and other statistical tests, we used version 2.15.1 of the R statistical package (R Core Team, 2015). Table 8 presents the QEM items grouped by index: If I am asked to summarize something I have heard, I can do it well. I can identify how others feel and also communicate my feelings. When I have a problem with someone, I talk to him/her and try to solve it. It seems important to me that there is a respectful relationship between those who form a group. When a conflict arises, I try to identify the reasons for it and look for solutions. I have the initiative to establish relationships in the groups in which I participate. I apologize to the people to whom I cause some hurt. I avoid calling my colleagues and friends by aggressive names.

Social Skills (Ihs)
In the case of Maria Clara School, the Iach and Iacr indices did not show sufficient internal consistency for the human sciences, as the values of Cronbach's Alpha test were 0.49 and 0.52, respectively. However, since there is a great conceptual proximity between both of them, we put the items of both in the same index, thus creating the Iact (index of self-knowledge and self-control) which, in the case of Maria Clara School, reached the value of 0.66.
After defining the indices, we conducted the one-tailed T-Type Mean Test to compare the means of two independent samples, in order to verify if there was evidence that PEEPV when applied in its reduced version did or did not contribute to the emotional development of the students of both schools.
Tables 9 and 10 present the results of this test for intervention and control groups, initially for Maria Clara School: Tables 9 and 10 show that, in both groups, the means of the four indices, from the statistical point of view, do not change; so we cannot affirm any significant change between the final and initial moments. The research hypothesis is that the selection of some lessons from the Emotional Education Program could promote formative aspects for human development (self-knowledge, self-control, self-motivation, empathy and social skills), which was not confirmed in the experiment evaluated.
Despite the results obtained, we cannot say that these concepts cannot contribute to human development. Furthermore, we consider it important to recognize that if the school were to participate in a unified and integral way in the experiment by inserting educators and functional staff rather than a specific intervention, and if the intervention time were extended, there would possibly be other outcomes. However, what is being affirmed by the test is that in this group, specifically, it was not possible to achieve results expected by the research, i.e., there was no evidence that the students developed by using the selected activities of PEEPV regarding the concepts that have been mentioned above.
As for Clarice School, all indices, including the Iach and Iacr, showed sufficient internal consistency for the human sciences, inasmuch as the values of Cronbach's Alpha test for all of them were greater than 0.6. In this case, therefore, we performed the one-tailed T-Type Mean Test with all of them. Tables 11 to 14 present the results of this test for the intervention and control groups at the Clarice School, in the three tests performed. From the content presented in Tables 11 and 12, it can be inferred that there is no evidence of tangible results regarding the intervention. Even the positive result for Self-Control (Iacr) cannot be taken in isolation as positive if the other concepts did not show development. This is because, in the control group, this concept was almost within the limit of statistical significance. Thus, there is no evidence that the intervention provided significant change in the students' development regarding the concepts being considered. Let's look at the same test with the 2nd and 3rd tests. In this test, however, we assumed that if the students developed in terms of the concepts under discussion, this development should have happened only in the control group and not necessarily in the intervention group, since there was no intervention during this period. Therefore, we performed the one-tailed T-test for the control group and the two-tailed test for the intervention group. Tables 13 and 14 provide another sign that there is no evidence of the students having developed, with regard to the concepts alluded to, derived from the intervention performed, as there is no statistically significant distinction between the control group and the intervention group.
Finally, thinking only of the general formation developed by Clarice School, we tested the difference between the 1 st and 3 rd tests, but this time without making a distinction between the control and the intervention groups (since the results showed there is no evidence of such a distinction), but considering the entire sample in each of the twotailed tests. We also observed that, regardless of the intervention, there was no evidence of students making progress regarding the concepts mentioned, except in the case of Self-Control; But the reasons for this development can be varied, and we cannot identify its possible causes, since in this test there is no separation between the control and intervention groups.
Finally, although it was not the objective of this research to make comparisons between the two schools analyzed, we were curious to verify whether or not, regarding the indices mentioned, there was a significant difference between the development of the students from the two schools, since the socioeconomic origins of the students are wide apart from each other.
To perform the test, we grouped all the questionnaires from both schools, regardless of testing and of the control and intervention groups, because there was no significant difference between them, and we had to group, in Clarice School, the Self-Control and Self-Knowledge indices, thereby forming the Iact index, so that we had the same parameters of comparison with Maria Clara School. The test performed was two-tailed. Results are presented in Table 16. The results seem to suggest that the various favorable aspects (social, economic, family, school, etc.) of Clarice School students are reflected more positively in their emotional education when compared to Maria Clara School students. However, despite all the less favorable aspects, students at the latter school show more ability to selfmotivate themselves than those at Clarice School; perhaps because of the fragile conditions in which they find themselves, they seek strength in themselves, supported by the search to overcome the obstacles that are common to those who need to overcome barriers and often face social, emotional, family and economic fragility.

Discussion and final remarks
The results presented above do not show any evidence of the socio-emotional development of the subjects in the intervention analyzed. Our initial idea was that one or two semesters of teaching an emotional education program would be sufficient to show positive, though tenuous, results in the education of adolescents who have never had access to curricular teaching of social and emotional skills in their school life. The results obtained, however, denied the validity of that initial idea.
The non-confirmation of our initial idea is not, however, confused with the PEEPV assessment. In addition to having taught only part of it, the program was not the object of study and appreciation by the professionals of the schools studied, nor did they take any initiative to adopt it as a regular curricular component. All there was, was episodic teaching for only one semester (at Clarice School, as already stated, each group was taught the component for only one semester) from a partial selection of PEEPV, thus reaching approximately 210 students (average of students of Maria Clara School intervention group plus the average of Clarice School intervention and control groups). Thus, before criticizing the aforementioned Program (PEEPV), it is necessary to recognize the limits of the experience and research carried out, emphasizing the following aspects: (1) no school decided institutionally to adopt any emotional education program, much less the PEEPV; (2) the PEEPV was not fully applied; (3) the selected content delivery period was too short -each student reached had contact with it for only six months.
The research conducted, however, serves as an indication that it is unlikely that any emotional education program will be effective under the conditions in which we conducted the procedure in question. If it is desired to evaluate emotional education programs, including the PEEPV more accurately, it is, therefore, necessary to undertake research under conditions of wide acceptance of and institutional commitment to emotional education by education professionals. However, this is precisely the condition that is difficult to establish when the aforementioned theme is still in subaltern condition vis-à-vis the guidelines that shape the Brazilian educational field. This is, however, the real condition that must be considered when conducting further research.
Emotional education is not part of the compulsory official curriculum in Brazil, which makes teaching it conditional only on the goodwill of teachers and specific schools. Consequently, it is unreasonable to expect that the introduction of a new discipline or curricular approach can take place without its being resisted by the respective academic field, which, like any disciplinary field, is structured along lines of force (Bourdieu, 2001) that define the hierarchies of the themes, subjects and institutions that are legitimized and prestigious in it.
On the other hand, it is also unreasonable, contrary to our initial idea, to imagine that only a semester can promote personal understanding and appropriation of the main skills of emotional development, since all other curricular contents such as mathematics and vernacular language are worked in a curricular way over several years. Consequently, it is not fair or reasonable to suppose that in just one semester adolescents can appropriate content that implies not only mental but also bodily, emotional and relational dispositions. In addition, the statistically significant difference between students in the two schools analyzed regarding self-knowledge and self-control skills, empathy, social skills, and self-motivation strengthens the above argument, as much of emotional education needs instruction in experiential contexts, reflection about such experiences and enough time to exercise them, modify them and integrate them into the particular subject's own way of life, and it is therefore understandable that different socioeconomic patterns entail equally different ways of experiencing emotional and relational experiences. In a way, the experiences of Bronfenbrenner (2011) have long indicated the importance of the duration of meaningful experiences so that emotional dispositions resulting from conscious learning can become structurally and uniquely appropriate. On the other hand, the concept of habitus and the forms of cultural capital studied by Bourdieu (2001) also indicate how much the modes of socialization select and strengthen certain skills and not others.
For all these reasons, as well as the results obtained from our research, although it is at an exploratory level, it is reasonable to conclude that for regular education to provide the formation of the skills analyzed here, it is important that they can be taught for a long time and not only for one semester. On the other hand, the curricular insertion of emotional education is something that is directly related to the educational area like a field of powerful forces, thus constituting something that depends on the dominant configurations within it changing in order to legitimize such learning as regular educational content -something that does not occur in the short term.
In any case, the discussion of the relationship between emotional education, class habitus (Bourdieu, 2001) and the educational field transcends the scope of this research, but at the same time it is a thematic issue that needs to be investigated as is suggested by the very results that we obtained as a result of this exploratory research.