In the context of changes or decreasing quality of life at school (violence, incivilities, stress, anxiety, depression), research on Health Education with its dialectic links between learning and health, that is, between educational processes and outcomes on the one hand, and health-promotion processes and outcomes on the other, suggests a frame to purpose radical alternatives and reconceptualize the school in itself. In this framework, the education of the “whole” person as the major clue, is urgently required today.  I.E. beyond general knowledge (“Savoirs”) and technical skills (“Savoir-Faire”), the role of Emotional Capital, referring to the set of emotional competencies (“Savoir-Etre”), is crucial at sustaining human capital constitution in a broad sense and person development and health (Gendron, 2004). Embedded in an interdisciplinary framework (as neuroscience, sociology, psychology, education and economics of HR), the Emotional Capital is a multi-level concept and approach (macro, meso, micro). The paper presented will be focused on the micro-level: the individual emotional capital, focused on personal health issues and well-being.

Topic: Developing emotional capital among children or adults learners belongs to the new challenges of education, which stresses out the importance of research on health education, to imagine dif­ferent educational models and alternatives to allow sustainable learning outcomes and future development to cope effectively with depression, anxiety, pressure at school and at work in a context of future uncertainty.

Broad and precised research issues and questions: Can interdisciplinary research can help at  imagining dif­ferent educational models and alternatives to consider not only physical well-being, academic score but also including mental, emotional and social aspects in the learning process models to allow a better sustainable person development? This is the challenge of this research. The economics model of emotional capital awarded at the French Academy in 2006, exploring socio-cultural and other contextual determinants on micro, meso and macro level, integrating psychology research outcomes, underlines that learning processes has to include emotional and affect dimensions, which obliges to revise the traditional patterns of teaching and educational curriculum and the return (calculation) of education as well.

Objective : This paper will be focus on the experimental research-action part of the global research developing emotional competencies among freshman students using tools from the positive psychology, the Mindfull and the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy/tTraining (ACT) on its return and impact on student well-being and performance.

From an interdisciplinary approach combining sciences of education, economic of human resources and positive psychology, it shows that emotional capital, developed via positive psychology tools, can improves the well-being and performance of learners which contributes to ensure sustainable education and person development.

Those outcomes on the returns of emotional capital find more and more echos in european educational programs and, explores the dynamic relations between education and health.

Conceptual and theoretical frames :

Emotional Capital: “set of resources (emotional competencies) that inhere to the person, useful for personal, professional and organizational developments which contribute to social cohesion and personal, economic and social successes”(Gendron,2008, p.7).”

Embedded on the theoritical framework of the emotional capital, this applied research mobilized a recent branch of psychology, E. M.Seligman and M. Csikszentmihalyi (2000),namely, positive psychology, that encompasses an approach to psychology from the perspective of healthy, successful life functioning like wellbeing and happiness, with an empirical grounding. Thus, this paper presents a framework by which positive psychological states may influence health and performance.

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