Trait Emotional Intelligence of Teachers Working in Special Education Schools

Abstract

Today’s schools are constantly engaged by various new experiences, challenges, difficulties and opportunities. Nowadays it is well known that for a school to be successful in both academic and social development it must be opened to use new strategies and methods in order to adapt to these constantly upcoming challenges. It is known that students with special educational needs usually find it harder to function socially, academically, they also tend to undervalue their quality of life. In recent years it has been discovered that student emotions can play a huge part for one’s development in the mentioned areas. In order to fully understand and dispose emotional powers one must be emotionally intelligent. In recent decades research has revealed that emotional intelligence can play a key role to increase the potential of students with special educational needs. These children usually struggle to socially adapt and communicate, to create new relationships, tend to be emotionally unstable, etc. It is also stated that in order to develop student’s emotional intelligence teachers should be highly emotionally intelligent as well as emotional intelligence is developed through social interactions, and the control of social interactions in the emotional level. Thus, the development of their emotional intelligence in a school environment is majorly important, especially if this kind of development is being conducted by highly emotionally intelligent teachers. It is because of these statements the aim of this study has been formulated – to evaluate the trait emotional intelligence of primary school teachers who work in special education schools. In order to reach this goal several research questions were raised: what are the global EI and its factor scores of our sample, how do these scores distribute between themselves, how do they contribute for the development of EI? Also, several research methods were used. A sample of 66 primary education teachers who work in special education schools form Lithuania and Latvia were asked to answer the TEIQue-SF questionnaire. Their scores were evaluated according to the questionnaires scoring key. Their score validity was conducted by using Cronbach’s alpha score and KMO factorial analysis scores all by using SPSS v23. Although the Cronhach’s alpha and KMO scores show no significant research data it has been partly discovered that the teacher’s from our sample global emotional intelligence score should be at a higher than intermediate-high level.