Intervención con adolescentes: una propuesta para fomentar el desarrollo socioemocional e inhibir la conducta violenta

Abstract

The goal of this article is to present an intervention program to promote socio-emotional development and to inhibit violent behavior during adolescence (Garaigordobil, 2008). The program contains 60 activities distributed in 7 modules: self-concept, intra-group communication, expression-understanding of emotions, help-cooperation, perceptionsstereotypes, discrimination-ethnocentrism, and conflict resolution. The intervention consists of applying a weekly 2-hour session during an entire school course. To validate the program, a study was carried out with a repeated measures design, pretest-intervention-posttest, control group, in which 174 adolescents (125-experimental subjects/49-control subjects) participated. The results confirm that the program promoted: 1) an increase of the intra-group-friendlyprosocial relations; the assertive-consideration-leadership behaviors, empathy, self-concept-selfesteem, the image of the classmates, the cognitive assertive strategies of social interaction, the capacity to analyze feelings; and 2) a decrease of prejudice towards other socio-cultural groups, trait-anxiety, and anxiety-shyness-withdrawal-antisocial behaviors. The article defines violence and the theoretical explanations, it describes the program, its assessment instruments and its effects on socio-emotional development.