Over the last few years, many schools have begun to place value on emotional well-being. This has involved the implementation of Social and Emotional Learning (SEL) actions. This has impacted positively on the health and well-being of individuals and the educational community.

The main objective of emotional education, as Bisquerra (2003) indicates, focuses on the development of emotional competences and the search for personal and social well-being. In relation to this, Brackett et al. (2015) highlight that "not having the skills to understand and manage emotions can be disruptive to optimal social and cognitive development" (p. 21). Beside this, SEL may contribute to the prevention of diseases that have a negative impact on our health and thus promote an emotional balance that helps to generate a state of well-being (Ortega, 2010; Piqueras et al., 2009).

In this regard, if social-emotional learning is developed in schools (Salzburg Global Seminar, 2018), these will be friendlier and safer, facilitating the creation of balanced learning environments, support community cohesion and increasing the capacity of citizens to adapt to a changing society. Furthermore, Viitaniemi (2020) and Reicher & Matischek-Jauk (2017) indicate that the development of emotional skills at school provides tools to prevent bullying and enables the improvement of the overall climate of the whole educational community.

Beside this, Social-Emotional Learning offers the possibility of providing adequate support to implement specific programmes such as conflict resolution, sexual education, health education or substance use prevention in an interrelated way (Elias et al., 2015; Greenberg et al., 2003).

The development of SEL reduces violence and aggressive behaviour, promotes resilience and serves as a basis for reducing health risk behaviours related to substance use such as tobacco or alcohol (Cohen, 2001; Fopiano & Haynes, 2001).

Moreover, as Aldrup et al. (2020) point out, teachers who are trained in emotional education have more suitable relationships with their students, a better understanding of their students' problems and fewer disruptive problems in class. According to Extremera & Fernández-Berrocal (2004), the development of these emotional competences will enable teachers to cope with work-related stress and burnout.

Concretely, the main objective of this study is to analyse the type of training in emotional education received by future Early Childhood and Primary Education teachers at a Spanish university. This will allow us to know how their academic development is going and to find out which competences (intrapersonal, interpersonal and complementary) are worked the most in their initial training. With this, the aim is to try to implement training proposals that will contribute to health and well-being.This work is part of a doctoral thesis wich is being supported by the Goverment of Spain through a pre-doctoral contract for “University Professor Training (FPU18/01858)”.

The methodological approach is quantitative and it is based on the application of the scale “Escala de Importancia y Necesidades Formativas en Educación Emocional” (EINFEM) This scale, that measures the type of training in emotional education received by students of Bachelor's Degrees in Education, has been previously validated with similar groups (Cejudo et al., 2015). This instrument consists of three categories that examine the importance that the sample attributes to a series of items on emotional competencies in relation to their professional development, the training needs that they perceive, and whether or not this training has been present in their academic development. Responses to the first two categories are Likert-type (1 = very low, 5 = very high) and the complementary scale on presence or absence is dichotomic. The data obtained are grouped into three dimensions: intrapersonal, interpersonal and complementary emotional competences. The results show the degree of concern of the participants in terms of training in empathic skills, assertiveness, stress management, identification of their own or other people’s emotions, conflict resolution, self-esteem, among others. The data-producing sample is composed of 205 students between 20 and 38 years old. Concretely, 81 are students from the Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education (6 males, 73 females and 2 identified as non-binary gender), and 124 are studying the Bachelor’s Degree in Primary Education (28 males and 96 females). The data collection process was carried out in March-April 2022 by attending classes of students in the last year and requesting the passing of questionnaires in the first 10 minutes of class. The whole process was accompanied by the corresponding ethical considerations and has a favourable report from the Bioethics Committee. The IBM SPSS Statistics version 25 software was used for the data analysis.

The data revealed that, in general, students of the Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education and the Bachelor’s Degree in Primary Education consider very important for their professional profile to work on emotional competences, especially on complementary competences (M=4.67) followed by interpersonal competences (M=4.65) and intrapersonal competences (M=4.60). Slightly lower averages are obtained when students are asked about the necessity of having training in intrapersonal (M=4.55), interpersonal (M=4.58) and complementary competences (M=4.70). With regard to the presence or absence of such training, in the Bachelor’s Degree in Early Childhood Education, more than 50% of the students consider that have had training in this respect (especially in intrapersonal and interpersonal competences), and to a lesser extent in complementary competences (38%). In relation to the Bachelor’s Degree in Primary Education, between 35-45% consider that they have been trained in intrapersonal and interpersonal competences and less than 25% in complementary competences. In light of this, it can be assumed that there are several emotional competences that are not covered in initial teacher training, but which are crucial in health and wellbeing education. Moreover, there is a greater concern in the Early Childhood Education degree than in the Primary Education degree. On the other hand, complementary competences are those which students consider most necessary, but in which they consider that have had the least training, with almost no training in some skills as stress management or control of impulsivity. On balance, future teachers seem to be aware of the importance and need for emotional education, but there is still little training in this area. For this reason, it will be significant to take these competences into account for future Early Childhood and Primary School Teachers, especially if our concern is to promote education for health and well-being.

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