Developing emotional intelligence in student teachers in universities

Abstract

Emotional intelligence is a relatively new concept. Hence, it appears crucial to investigate its short-term and long-term effect on educational process. The primary aim of this study is to identify how teaching emotional intelligence affects the emotional competence of social pedagogue students by measuring their levels of emotional intelligence before and after training. For this, the Hall Emotional Intelligence Test was used. The focus lies on these aspects of emotional intelligence (emotional competencies): Emotional Awareness, Managing your Emotions, Self-motivation, Empathy, and Managing the Emotions of Other People. The results demonstrate a substantial improvement in all these measures. The present findings may be valuable for further research on emotional intelligence in education. In addition, the paper proves that raising teacher’s emotional intelligence is beneficial to teaching and learning.