Emotional Intelligence - January 2015 Inset

The term Emotional Intelligence gained publicity in 1990 when Peter Salovey and John Mayer explained their thoughts on the subject.

This term was popularised by Daniel Goleman with his 1995 publication, Emotional Intelligence: Why it can matter more than IQ.

Emotional Intelligence

How you relate to your learners?

Can you find a metaphor which best captures how you see yourself in relation to groups of learners?

• law enforcer to the potentially criminal• carer to the vulnerable• salesperson to potential buyer• preacher to the sinful• sheepdog to sheep• website to surfers• gardener to plants• tour guide to tour bus

Subject Expertise

Emotional Intelligence

Teaching & Learning

Personal competence is made up of your self-awareness and self-management skills, which focus more on you individually than on your interactions with other people.

Personal competence is your ability to stay aware of your emotions and manage your behaviour and tendencies.

• Self-Awareness is your ability to accurately perceive your emotions and stay aware of them as they happen.

• Self-Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions to stay flexible and positively direct your behaviour.

Social competence is made up of your social awareness and relationship management skills; social competence is your ability to understand other people’s moods, behavior, and motives in order to improve the quality of your relationships.• Social Awareness is your ability to accurately pick up on

emotions in other people and understand what is really going on.

• Relationship Management is your ability to use awareness of your emotions and the others’ emotions to manage interactions successfully.

In the Classroom

Create an environment of respect.

If you want your students to respect you and your classroom rules, you must respect each of them.

- acknowledge all forms of diversity (e.g., race or religion) and disabilities (e.g., physical or learning)

- Do not get frustrated if some students are not learning the material as quickly as you expect. A major part of emotional intelligence is showing empathy.

- If you can try a different teaching technique or a different way of explaining a concept, this could alleviate some of the stress of learning.

In the Classroom

Manage your emotions while taking responsibility.

There will be situations that frustrate you, but not only should you obviously learn to hold back visible anger, you should also take responsibility for your emotions without placing blame on your students.

Focus on using "I" instead of "You" when making a statement. For example, instead of saying, "You are not working hard enough to understand this concept," say, "I am confused about what is making this concept difficult to understand. Let's try together to understand what is not making sense."

Avoiding putting the students on the defensive may help open their minds to learning.

In the Classroom

Be honest and own up to your mistakes.

If a student asks you a question and you do not know the answer, honesty can be the best policy. Tell the student that you will do some research and get back to them regarding the correct answer.

Also, if you make a mistake, apologize and correct yourself and then move forward. By setting a good example of honesty in the classroom, you will hopefully be encouraging honesty from your students.

Remember to not only walk the walk but also talk the talk!

In the Classroom

Validate students.

We as humans like to feel valued rather than dismissed.

So, make an effort to understand what your students may be feeling and relay this to them while also helping them resolve their own issues.

If you empower your students to figure out on their own why something is necessary compared to you just telling them that it is, they may be more accepting of the task. It is hard being told what to do, so encourage self-management.

Characteristics of a non-confrontational style

• using a quiet and calm voice and avoiding finger stabbing and prolonged eye contact in general classroom interaction, thereby creating a non-threatening environment;

• using low-level interventions and walking around the classroom to maintain close proximity to students.

• using humour and distraction, where appropriate, to reduce the tension and help students recognise the need to match their conduct to the situation.

In these ways, the teacher demonstrates empathy and appropriate patterns of social interaction so as to promote these skills on the part of all students. As students learn these skills, the incidence of confrontation between them also diminishes.

Using emotional intelligence is a prerequisite for developing a good relationship with a group of learners, which then can be the basis for producing learners who have:

• More engagement, • Greater motivation,• A greater readiness to take risks in their learning,• A more positive approach, • A readiness to collaborate,• More creativity and more tenacity.

Students will forget what you say,students will forget what you do but students will never forget how you made them feel.