Rol EI in Education and Programs

 

Assessment and Education of Emotional Intelligence

Topic 4 - The role of EI in education

 

Part I. Take-away topic questions

 

Why should EI be expected to be a strong predictor of academic performance? And why not?

Empirical evidence supports the notion that EI impacts academic success either directly or by supporting key personal resources: individuals who score higher in EI have better academic adjustment, probably because they’re better at coping with stress and keeping themselves motivated, and have better social support.

Cognitive ability remains by and large the main predictor of academic achievement, however, and socioeconomic status also plays a very important role. It could be argued therefore that interventions targeting EI are missing the point, since the contribution of EI to academic performance will always be marginal.

 

According to Petrides et al.’s (2004) study, what was the relationship between trait EI and academic performance for students with lower IQs?

Because they experience more stress during their studies, adolescents with low IQ benefit academically if they have appropriate self-perceived emotional skills, since EI informs the behavioural response to the stressor, thus moderating the effect of cognitive ability.

 

How would you summarize Qualter et al.’s conclusions about future research on EI and education?

There needs to be rigorous scientific evaluation of the interventions aiming at developing EI in students. To do so, a multi-method approach to measuring EI must be adopted, and evaluations must seek to explain why intervention is effective under certain circumstances, or for certain types of children, but not others.

Assessment and Education of Emotional Intelligence

Topic 5 - Emotional education programmes

 

Part I. Take-away topic questions

 

According to Schutte et al.’s (2013) article, Nelis et al.’s (2009) article, and Mikolajczak & Peña Sarrionandia’s (2015) article, what does the evidence say about improving EI through training/education programmes?

·         both ability and trait EI assessed at the end of the programmes show significant improvements

·         positive consequences associated to higher EI (better perceived physical and mental health, higher relationship and work satisfaction, for instance) are also observed

·         biological markers of health also tend to improve

·         some studies have carried out follow-up measurements and have found that the changes tend to persist

·         hypothesised mechanisms underlying the improvement in EI:

o    training influences ability and trait emotional intelligence directly, through expanding an individual’s emotion-related knowledge and skills

o    training mainly impacts emotional self-efficacy, which leads over time to practice-related changes in emotional intelligence ability and trait emotional intelligence

·         more research is required to verify these initial findings and to uncover how training increases emotional intelligence, what specific training works best, and what important outcomes can be produced

 

Part II. Critical reading questions

 

Is there a compromise amongst researchers in the field of EI regarding the different constructs of ability and trait EI and their usefulness when designing and evaluating educational interventions?

Some of the essential readings for this topic seem to suggest a preference for a multi-method approach when it comes to applied settings: both Schutte et al. (2013), on the one hand, and Mikolajczak, Petrides et al. (2009, cited in Mikolajczak & Peña-Sarrionandia, 2015), on the other hand, take into account different aspects of emotional competency, as I have tried to summarise in the table below.

 

Mikolajczak, Petrides et al. (2009, cited in Mikolajczak & Peña-Sarrionandia, 2015)	Schutte et al. (2013)
declarative knowledge what people know about emotions and emotionally intelligent behaviors (e.g. Do I know which emotional expressions are constructive in a given social situation?)		assessed with maximum-performance tests such as the MSCEIT  (it’s the only one which covers the domain comprehensively, yet its validity has been questioned)
ability (AEI) the ability to apply this knowledge in a real-world situation  (e.g. Am I able to express my emotions constructively in a given social situation?)
trait (TEI) emotion-related behaviour and  dispositions.  The focus here is not on what people know or on what they are able to do, but on what they typically do over extensive periods of time		measured via self-report questionnaires  (TEIQ, Bar-On/EQi)
	self-efficacy (ESE) beliefs about one’s own emotional competency	measured via self-report questionnaires tapping respondents’ beliefs about their emotional competency, such as the Emotional Self-Efficacy Scale (Kirk, Schutte & Hine, 2008)

 

These layers would be loosely connected, that is, they wouldn’t necessarily correlate -we’ve learnt already that correlations between ability EI measures and trait EI measures are weak. According to Qualter et al. (2017), they’re different ways of operationalising emotional competency, neither interchangeable nor mutually exclusive, which capture a unique slice of a person’s overall emotional profile and should be measured independently, using different instruments. Moreover, they are all influenced when targeted by educational intervention and they contribute independently to mental health and academic outcomes.

Notwithstanding the addition of ESE as distinct from TEI, a fundamental split between actual ability and perception of ability still stands.

 

What are the benefits of adopting a multi-method approach?

1.      The strengths of one method offset the limitations of another:

o    self-report measures are susceptible to self-presentation bias and to poor self-insight, which means they’re not an appropriate tool for measuring actual ability. However, they’re the only way to access highly subjective phenomena such as ESE

o    maximum-performance tests can’t be scored objectively; when the correct answer is determined by consensus or expert judgement high scores may reflect declarative knowledge or conformity to social norms, instead of emotional ability

2.      It can reveal within-person discrepancies:

o    some people may be quite skilled emotionally (high AEI), but lack the self-confidence to translate those skills into everyday behaviour (low TEI/ESE), others may believe they are quite competent (high TEI/ESE), yet their actual abilities might be lacking (low AEI).  Both these discrepancy profiles have been linked to poorer behavioural and well-being outcomes.

o    there’s also evidence that high TEI/ESE may offset the effects of low AEI for some individuals

o    there's evidence of decreased TEI after an EI training programme, which can be interpreted as an individual with an initially discrepant profile who gains a more accurate self-perception as a result of the training in emotional competence, which should be seen as an improvement in my opinion

All in all, it’s essential that an intervention is designed with a specific construct of emotional competency in mind, which will determine the measurements that should be used to monitor and assess progress, and the appropriateness of the programme for a given context.

 

What are the mechanisms underlying EI improvement due to training?

Given that EI is a multifaceted construct, it seems necessary to ask what aspects of it we’re targeting in EE programmes, what mechanisms we expect to bring about change, and whether there's interaction between the different aspects.

According to Schutte et al. (2013), training most likely directly influences both AEI and TEI through expanding an individual’s emotion-related knowledge and skills. Alternatively, it might be that training mainly impacts ESE, and that an increase in confidence leads over time to practice-related changes in AEI and TEI.

In my opinion, these two different mechanisms should yield different measurement results: training-related ESE improvement should have a greater effect on AEI and TEI measures after some time has passed since the end of the intervention.