EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENT. A STUDY AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS FROM PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION PROGRAMS

Abstract

In recent years the interest in emotional intelligence within scientific literature has grown, but too little has been written about the influence of emotional intelligence within educational systems, especially the relation between emotional intelligence and teachers’ job performance, or emotional intelligence and students’ academic achievement. Universities around the world have experiencing changes and reforms, impacting the teachers’ job performance and academic achievement among university students. Emotional intelligence plays an important role in many areas of our lives. The scope of the research is to investigate the impact of emotional intelligence on students’ academic achievement from public administration programs. We choose students from public administration, since they are supposed to work after graduation in public institutions, and get in direct contact with citizens. At the level of Romania, there is no study with predictive value regarding the “impact of emotional intelligence on students’ academic achievements” supported by empirical research. Regarding the methodology, we collected data using the questionnaire which was developed based on the instruments by previous researchers. Respondents were students from public administration programs. The benefits of such a study are to provide a solid basis for understanding the mechanisms of emotional intelligence (EI) and their role in determining or sabotaging academic achievement. The effect of emotional intelligence on students’ academic achievement was established. On the basis of the findings, it is suggested that emotional intelligence should be integrated into university students’ curriculum. The study further advocated for the promulgation of educational policy on emotional intelligence. Also, this research will represent an important contribution to the Romanian and international literature, both in the field of emotional intelligence, as well as in the field of students’ academic achievement and continuous students’ personal development (academic self-efficacy).