Emotional intelligence (EI) is a topic we have briefly touched on in some of our previous courses, but we have never really considered the idea more closely and how it can influence education and student success. I was very intrigued by this topic when we first came across it because throughout my educational journey there was absolutely no emphasis or focus on learning about emotions and how they affect our daily lives. After taking a closer look at the topic and discovering findings from research studies, I believe that emotional intelligence should be implemented into our school curricula to not only promote student success, but student well-being as well.
There are a number of definitions for EI but the
following video sums it up quite nicely and provides more information on the
different components of emotional intelligence:
source: youtube.com
Emotional
intelligence creates a positive learning environment which contributes to
academic achievement. In a classroom
environment, it is important that students have the skills to communicate, pay
attention, work in teams, and be able to let go of the personal and family
issues that may get in the way of working and learning. In order to achieve this type of classroom environment, teaching
students about self-awareness, managing emotions, empathy, cooperation,
effective communication and how to resolve conflicts from an early age is
essential.
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Some emotions
have a positive effect on learning while others block the learning process. This
is why it is important to understand what you are feeling and why, and how you
can take this information and use it to adapt to the situation or address the
problem in a positive manner. For example, a student high in emotional
intelligence working on a math problem may become frustrated because they don’t
understand how to solve it. Instead of giving up, not asking for help or going
off-task, this student will think about what exactly it is they don’t
understand and then seek guidance from the teacher. Communicating effectively
with others is also a crucial component of emotional intelligence. In this
case, the student will not only get help with the work, but will gain a better
understanding of the material, and the teacher may even provide an alternative
method of working around the problem that is easier for the student to learn.
Once the student accomplishes one difficult task, it can serve as a source of
motivation to continue working hard and to discover new ways to overcome
challenges. This is not only helpful for the individual, but can contribute to
the overall success in a classroom as students learn to help each other and
work together in groups to achieve a common goal, build leadership skills, and
improve productivity.
There are a number of ways to implement
emotional literacy in the classroom to promote EI among all students. For
example, an article I read addressed a pedagogical approach that can be used in
emotionally intelligent classrooms called Responsive Learning. Responsive
learning is “an instructional approach that integrates the teaching of academic
skills and the teaching of social skills as a part of everyday school life”
(Gupta, 2012, p. 20). In this type of learning, teachers pay attention to the
developmental levels of the students and enhance their communication skills,
help create self-control to increase their academic capabilities and engage the
parents in goal-setting as well. Another article explains how by promoting
students’ emotional intelligence, teachers are “expanding their understanding
of self [and are] giving them a better chance of developing relationships with
others that might provide a basis for the development of full lives as active
members of society, of being able to learn through those relationships much
more about the richness of the world around them, and of being able to develop
spiritual understanding” (Park, 1999, p. 24). I really like this last quote and
agree with the author’s perspective on the importance of teaching emotional
intelligence in schools.
Here is another video which explains that
“educating the heart is as important as educating the mind.” It demonstrates
how EI plays a key role in the educational journey of students and even offers
a teaching strategy to implement in your own classroom:
source: youtube.com
What are your thoughts on integrating emotional
intelligence into school curricula? Is it possible to do so considering
teachers only have a limited time to cover all components of the curriculum?
Are schools even the right place to introduce and build on emotional
intelligence?
References:
Brenden Gouveia. (2013). Emotional
Intelligence. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=weuLejJdUu0
Christa Tinari. (2013). Teaching
Emotional Intelligence Skills to Children. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LfXsjrzu3i8
Gupta, S. (2012). Emotional Intelligence
in Classroom. Advances In Management, 5(10), 16-23.
Park, J. (1999). Emotional Literacy:
Education for Meaning. International Journal Of Children's Spirituality,
4(1), 19.
Great blog post Sonia! I enjoyed your visuals throughout and videos, as well as the questions at the end to get readers to really think about the topic you presented. I agree with you that I really enjoy the idea of using emotional intelligence and teaching this in the classroom. I enjoyed how the first video explained how all reasoning is made from both logic and emotions. Therefore, we need to also teach students to be in tune with their emotions since they are a huge factor in everyday decisions that they make. If we as teachers ignore the emotions of students those students will have a hard time understanding their emotions themselves and why they choose to make certain decisions. In my own education I too feel like I lacked a large part of emotional intelligence in my learning from teachers. However, I can remember one grade 6 class that my teacher showed a high degree of care for us as students and our emotions, which allowed us to become more aware of our own emotions. I think this could really help all students because the hidden curriculum of how to appropriately act in society is essential in schools. Students need to learn how to be social in the classroom and a huge part of that is understanding their own emotions! Learning should never be strictly logical and teachers need to keep in mind how emotions play a role in the students learning as well. I think you could definitely incorporate emotional intelligence into school lessons. It could be easy to do little activities to incorporate the emotions of students like asking them how they feel personally about specific topics. Also, as a teacher I think we could benefit our students by showing emotions ourselves, like I mentioned earlier my grade 6 teacher was able to show us how much she cared about us personally and therefore we felt comfortable expressing our emotions in class. If you create a positive, safe environment for your students I think emotional intelligence would be easily incorporated. How important do you think emotional intelligence is? Do you think it is something teachers have to actively incorporate or is it just something that is naturally incorporated with some teachers?
ReplyDeleteSonia,
ReplyDeleteI love the idea of teaching emotional intelligence in the classroom! I can’t remember any of my previous teachers focusing explicitly on teaching emotional intelligence; however, I feel as though they may have been teaching it implicitly in subtle ways that I just didn’t notice at the time. Perhaps teaching emotional intelligence is more a part of the hidden curriculum? Teachers could implement the topic into other strands of the curriculum, making it easier to cover the vast amounts of material students are expected to learn. It could become part of everyday learning and be involved in some of the routines within the classroom. For example, a teacher that I observed used an app called Plickers to assess each student’s emotions at the beginning and the end of each day. Students flipped a barcode depending on if they were feeling sad, mad, or happy, without showing other students so that they could keep it a bit more private. The teacher scanned the barcode using an iPad in order to collect formative data overtime. If the child had several sad days in a row, the teacher could use the data to address the issue with the student and figure out why they were feeling sad. This became a routine in the classroom and relates to emotional intelligence because it teaches students to monitor their emotions and understand the ways they are feeling. Additionally, it helps teachers to address the students that may be feeling emotions that could hinder their successful learning. I believe that teaching emotional intelligence really works towards teaching the whole child as well as preparing them to be active citizens in the future. We have consistently learned about teaching the whole child in our courses and I hope to be able to educate holistically. In my opinion, I think that educating students about emotional intelligence is a really big part of that. The videos you added to your blog really helped to briefly explain the basics of emotional intelligence and taught me how I could incorporate it into the classroom. For your next blog, perhaps you could connect more personally to the topic and share a personal story so that we can see how you relate to the topic. Finally, the quote “educating the heart is as important as educating the mind” that you used really stuck with me and inspired me to begin to think about incorporating emotional intelligence into my future classroom!
I loved how when discussing emotional intelligence you mentioned how it can help students balance potential emotional issues at home or outside of school in order to be functional within the classroom. I think this is an excellent point and also an idea I hadn’t automatically thought of when thinking about the value that teaching emotional intelligence to students. I know that when growing up I had some issues in my home life that as I got older, towards the end of elementary school, it really began to affect my classroom performance. I feel like sometimes I had a really hard time managing the mixture of anger and sadness that it would make me feel I could not focus. This also applies more generally to life as well. There are almost always times when you find that you should be completing some type of task and you are distracted by some type of situation or event in your life that has stirred up some kind of emotion within you. Teaching emotional intelligence to students will help them to strengthen their metacognition and focus in a variety of contexts.
ReplyDeleteIn response to your questions I do think that emotional intelligence is something that educators should seek to incorporate into their classrooms. I think that it is possible to do this without really increasing the work load for educators or putting a strain on time for other more pressing learning to take place. One way in which this could be done is through simply taking advantage of teachable moments as they occur within the classroom. As situations arise teachers should take the time to point out and identify emotional situations and how they are affecting behaviors of the students. For example, if half the class was the losing team in the soccer match during the gym class prior to the current language arts class and the effects appear to be present, the teacher could take the time to address this and talk the students through how to move past this from an emotionally intelligent point of view. Another way in which this could be achieved is by utilizing a tool like the Feel and Deal card deck that was discussed in the second video you presented. This deck provides activities and lessons on emotional intelligence that relate to particular subjects like science and include components of reading and writing that work to enhance language skills. If you use something like this you can work lessons on emotional intelligence into the lesson plan without having to go too far out of your way. Are there any other ways you could think of to incorporate emotional intelligence into the classroom without overloading yourself or your students?