Research development of teachers' emotional intelligence in the 21st century: A bibliometric analysis

Emotional intelligence (EI) has been recognized as a critical factor in shaping teachers' teaching effectiveness, classroom management, professional well-being, and mental health. As a key psychological construct in the teaching profession, teacher emotional intelligence (TEI) has received increasing scholarly attention in recent years. This study employs bibliometric analysis to quantitatively and visually analyze 258 academic publications on TEI from the WOS core databases in the 21st century. The study reports some bibliometric characteristics of these publications, in which it found that the number of annual publications over the years went through two distinct phases: a nascent and early exploratory period (2000–2018) and a rapid growth period (2019–2023). Spain and China emerged as leading contributors, while Canada's studies demonstrated the highest citation impact (average citations per article). The study also shows other valuable information such as the primary sources of publications, the most prolific authors and institutions, and the most cited publications, etc. Moreover, the relationships among items of publications and keywords were identified and analyzed to present the research status of this field. “Burnout”, “job satisfaction” and “self-efficacy” are the high-frequency and core keywords. It can be found that research on TEI has constantly evolved into more diverse themes in the 21st century, with “EI”, “higher education” and “engagement” being consistent themes across different development periods. Notably, topics like “support”, “mindfulness” and “intention” are emerging, expected to continue gaining intention. Based on data analysis and literature reading, this article provides several possible directions for future research in TEI.