Promoting emotional intelligence in social work students

Is it actually possible to facilitate the promotion of Emotional Intelligence (EI) and its components among social work students? Encouraging this skill in SW students may lead them to important improvements, learning to strengthen self and clients' motivation, to maintain a focused approach, to perform well without being upset by emotions and to develop effective strategies to deal with times of crisis (Grant et al., 2013; Kotsou et al., 2019; Stanley & G., 2021). Deciding to engage in a helping profession is a considerable demanding choice, but the path that follows is often focused more on technical and theoretical knowledge, omitting to deepen the emotional motions that encountering people’s fragility arouses in each one. As Educators we can promote EI inside classrooms through specific trainings aimed towards developing a greater knowledge of self and of personal emotional dynamics and experiential learning appears to be the most effective method with adult learners. An experiment with students enrolled in the first year of the Bachelor's Degree in Social Work of the University of Bologna (2021/2022 academic year) based on experiential learning and PBL method is here described. Inviting students to question not only about procedures but to promote awareness on emotions seemed to facilitate them to enter the world of professional SW better equipped to face complex, contradictory and challenging contexts. Finally, some operational indications are provided for Educators and Trainers for handling these issues with care.