Over the past two decades, scholars and practitioners have become increasingly interested in studying emotional intelligence and its competencies, and, in turn,  their implications for important life outcomes.  Accordingly, findings from diverse meta-analytic research have documented that they are important factor in both mental health, well-being criteria and performance (Martins et al., 2010; Sánchez-Álvarez et al., 2016).

In the academic context, the development of emotional intelligence contributes to students’ social and academic adjustment (Durlak et al. 2011; Greenberg et al. 2003), which is placed at the base of emotional competences (EC). EC are a practical application of emotional intelligence (Fernández-Pérez et al., 2017). This means that the simple presence of a high emotional intelligence is simply not enough. People have not only the potential of emotional intelligence, but also need to develop their emotional competences. Goleman (1998) suggested and proved that the emotional competences, are a higher ability that leads to performance. Moreover, they are trainable, and could be influenced by education (Boyatzis & Saatcioglu, 2008; Fernández-Pérez et al., 2017), having beneficial effects on individuals (ej. Durlak et al., 2011; Ruiz-Aranda et al., 2012). Then, we analyze the effects of emotional competencies (EC) on student’s Academic Performance (AP),  instead of Emotional Intelligence, what lead the study to focus on the individual and combined effect of every EC on the AP of the student.

Then, the purpose of this study are to use the construct EC as a behavioural approximation of emotional intelligence through a descriptive definition based on Goleman (1998) and Cherniss and Goleman (2005), with six clusters or groups of EC: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, leadership and social skills.

The sample population for our study consisted of 216 university students, all studying degrees in management and business subjects, at the University of Granada, in Spain. The data were obtained from a survey conducted at end of course 2015-2016 in the monitoring subjects. In order to obtain a valid and complete set of data, SEM analysis (LISREL) was performed. Regarding the sample characteristics, 63 percent of the study population was female and 37 percent male, with an average age of 22 years. With respect to the grant, 33.8 percent of the students have a grant and 66.2 percent not to have. La nota media de expediente de los alumnos es de 6.62. Harman’s single-factor test was used to test for common method bias. We also examined whether there were differences in academic performance according to these students’ EC and the moderator role of cooperative learning. In this regard, the teacher designed some cooperative activities that helped students to work in groups, be active throughout the teaching-learning process, be aware of the emotional competences present in the activities suggested and develop their emotional competences.

The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has required changes in Universities. It implies a shift to a University with a learning approach where the output is the most important thing, on the contrary of the previous teaching approach centred in inputs. This new space must create competent, responsible, and critical professionals who are able to be adaptable in the labour market. The creation of the EHEA has involved substantial changes at tertiary education that affect the main elements of the teaching-learning process, i.e. objectives, contents, methodology and evaluation (Barkeley et al., 2005). This new environment has driven a deep reflection about the higher education´s training and the way the knowledge is taught by the teachers. The learning is constructed from 4 basis: Learn to know, learn to do, learn to be and learn to live together (Delors, 1996). Therefore, the new teaching view is focused on the assessment of specific competences (related to a specific disciplines) and transversal competencies (more general and shared in all the knowledge disciplines), where EC are included (Filella et al., 2014). These are essential for the integral development of students and for the development of academic competences. Additionally, cooperative learning is recently demonstrating to be a clear example of active pedagogy because it promotes that students learn by doing and by working together in groups in order to accomplish a common goal (Johnson et al, 2007; 2014). Therefore, in this paper we analyse if cooperative learning encourage the relationship EC and academic performance in management, since it is expected to provide the necessary leadership for motivating and empowering links between students and teachers-students Results reveal that, when cooperative learning is included, the direct effects of EC on AP do not drastically change. Moreover, cooperative learning show neither direct effect on AP.

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