Developing Student-Teachers' Emotional Intelligence to Promote an Efficient Classroom : An Exploratory Study in a Lebanese University

النوع : Thèse

Many Lebanese teachers have to cope with varied stressors such as overloading teaching tasks, students’ discipline problems and administration pressures. To be able to carry on, they need to face frustrations, have ability to control impulse, empathize and hope. As many researchers state, there is a strong relationship between teachers’ affective traits and learners’ emotional development. Thus, the aim of this quantitative and qualitative exploratory study is to find out to what extent the Bachelor and Master degrees students in the department of education at one of the prominent private universities in Beirut, following the American system, experience emotional intelligence, and to compare higher classes (senior, TD and master) emotional intelligence with those of lower classes (sophomore and junior). Four steps were executed: a) asking 142 students to fill in Bar-on’s emotional intelligence self-report inventory; b) comparing the sophomore and junior class students’ emotional Intelligence (EI) with the Master, senior and teaching Diploma (TD) class students’ emotional Intelligence; c) carrying out group interviews with 28 practicum course student-teachers; and d) Holding an in-depth interview with six practicum course instructors. The collected data were analyzed using Rouven Bar-On EQ-i: S manual guidelines. The raw scores were converted into standard scores employing Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Moreover, the literature related to emotional intelligence was used to analyze the students’ group interviews and the instructors’ in-depth interview. The result of this research indicates that participating students (pre-service teachers or students-teachers) have high emotional intelligence; it also indicates that Master, TD, senior students’ (higher classes) emotional intelligence is higher than sophomore/ Junior students’ (Lower classes).