Theory Review: Emotional Intelligence - Andrew Kissell

 Theory Review: Emotional Intelligence in Learning

 

Name	Commented On
Andrew Kissell	Keila Escobedo
Andrew Kissell	Tomie Gartland

 

Main Theoretical Points

When studying what motivates one to learn, the topic of emotions must be covered because they allow us to develop an understanding as to why we are able to learn.  Within the broad topic of emotions is a specific skillset that a learner can use during their learning experience to guide their thoughts and actions called emotional intelligence. Depending on the researcher, the components of emotional intelligence vary but the five listed by Dorothy MacKeracher in Making Sense of Adult Learning (2004) appear to encompass the general ideas covered by experts such as Daniel Goleman, Peter Salovey, and John Mayer. According to MacKeracher, the five components of emotional intelligence are knowing one’s emotions, managing one’s emotions, motivating oneself, recognizing emotions in others, and handling relationships.

Knowing one’s emotions is to have self-awareness. The self-aware have the capacity for identifying what they are feeling, understanding their strengths and weaknesses, and relaying these feelings and emotions to others. Roberts (1995) indicates this awareness is more than just the awareness of one’s state of being, which could be experiencing an itch or physical discomfort. Instead, emotional self-awareness goes deeper in to identifying more significant and personal characteristics of the self that outwardly model standard personal behavior and overall personality such as anger, hope, gratitude. Israelashvili, Oosterwijk, Sauter, and Fischer (2019) use the term emotional differentiation to describe this ability “to use emotion words with such specificity that one's emotion words vary across emotional situations”.  Individuals with high emotional differentiation would then be able to separately and accurately label their anger and frustration or gratitude and happiness in different situations, whereas those with low emotional differentiation would likely use these terms interchangeably.  

The second component of emotional intelligence is the ability to manage one’s emotions. One in possession of this characteristic directs their own motives by self-regulating mood and emotion. A highly emotionally intelligent individual monitors and evaluates feelings as they occur, thus limiting the effects of emotions on one’s ability to function or be taken over by impulses or controlled by irritability and anxiety. This characteristic is exemplified in people who seamlessly adapt to changing circumstances, those who always seem to be able to avoid gloom, and individuals who avoid actions based on instant gratification (MacKeracher, 2004).

Related to managing one’s emotions, self-motivation is the third component of emotional intelligence. Individuals that properly manage their emotions can then direct their energy toward a goal, such as problem-solving, future plans, or other tasks perceived as success. It should be noted that when examining performance and energy expenditure, self-motivation differs from self-control.  Self-control requires and uses additional energy to control actions, whereas self-motivation maintains levels of energy, requires less effort and results in a feeling of invigoration during and upon completion of a task (Kazen, Kuhl, & Leicht, 2015).

Recognizing emotions in others is the fourth component of emotional intelligence and is widely identified as having empathy toward others. The empath picks up on social cues and signals that are used to identify what others need or are feeling. Just as important in society, learning environments, and within other organizations those skilled in empathy recognize important social and power dynamics in groups. Where an empath will appear comfortable and warm socially, those with poor skills in recognizing emotion in others come across as oblivious and disconnected from the group dynamic (MacKeracher, 2004). An interesting correlation made by Israelashvili et al (2019) proposes that high emotional differentiation in oneself tends to translate into the ability to recognize emotions in others based on visual, nonverbal expressions.  

The final component of individuals with emotional intelligence is the ability to handle relationships. In most basic terms, these people have the ability to manage emotions and moods to get a desired result from others. People with these skills use both verbal and nonverbal skill typically to achieve personal or organizational goals, encourage teamwork, offer leadership, or engage in conflict management. These skills are based on the ability to communicate clearly in order to inspire and influence others, but unfortunately this charismatic skill does not always lead toward a worthy goal and can be tool used in corruption (MacKeracher, 2004).  

Application

“The self-awareness domain provides the basis for the development of learned competencies such as to perform an accurate self-assessment of the advantages and disadvantages in decision-making processes, which is necessary when [one] must play his/her leading role in his/her work team” (Fernandez-Berrocal, Extremera, 2006). For educators, knowing one’s emotions gives them the maturity to understand their positive and negative emotions and managing these emotions allows them to conduct accurate self-assessment to understand their role and the impact of their decisions during decision-making process.

Achieving buy in from learners/workers/your audience transitions tasks from self-controlled to self-motivated. “Self-control is a ‘dictatorial’—other-directed— mode in which the person suppresses her/his own needs to reach an assigned goal and it is associated with effortful task enactment because behavioral energy has to work against negative motivational incentives rather than being supported by positive incentives. Self-regulation, in contrast, is a more democratic—self-congruent—mode to carry out intentions and it is associated with invigoration and not with effortful enactment” (Kazen, Kuhl, & Leicht, 2015). This process may be achieved by allowing for more autonomy during the learning process so the goals are less controlled by external sources and can be controlled more internally.

The use of empathy in the classroom, especially during interpretation of student feedback and when gaining new information, should help educators navigate through interaction in diverse, multicultural classrooms. Educators can use tools like perspective taking to gain a deeper understanding of their students and empathic concern that communicate shared emotion, feelings, and experience with students from diverse backgrounds. To ensure a full understanding of the students and their perspective, teachers must also process the behavioral feedback gained from interactions so future interactions can be modified to achieve positive results.

The charismatic educator uses the knowledge of their own and others’ emotions to manage the mood and interactions between both themselves and students and students with other students. However, properly handling relationships might allow teachers to maintain an open dialogue in class where students have a part in guiding the lessons, using their backgrounds to contribute to the material. Teachers attempting to achieve this goal must be adept at asking the right questions, linking the goals of curriculum with student interest or concerns and ensuring the students are comfortable enough to share and be heard without judgement (Christoph & Nystrand, 2001).

Reflection

Highlights

            The highlight of this theory review for me was the personal reflection I engaged in the entire time I was researching the different components of emotional intelligence. I would have been remiss had I not allowed myself to be challenged to identify my strengths and weaknesses and how these might manifest themselves as a prospective educator. To share my revelations, I realize that I am quite self-aware in that I know my emotions, whether they are positive or negative, and I express them adequately; however, my personal challenge comes in managing moods and not getting “swamped” by either distress or euphoria.

                Another valuable lesson gleaned from this theory review research is how relatively new the information and studies are for emotional intelligence. The most cited researcher throughout this process was Daniel Goleman and his work completed in 1995, so the bulk of the study relating to this incredibly useful topic is merely 25 years old. I read several times the notes from article authors indicating the lack of studies regarding these topics, so future educators may have the benefit of a fuller research of emotional intelligence to drawn upon.

Process

            I used a very methodical approach in researching the components related to the theory of emotional intelligence in that our assigned text acted as the basis for definitions of these five components.  Once I established these definitions in paragraphs under the main theoretical points heading and I felt I had a working understanding of each element, I used Ball State OneSearch to locate articles with online text that contained at least one each of these emotional intelligence components and their key words. I was able to find related definitions and examples of each to help embellish the description of each.

            To find specific applications of each component of emotional intelligence, I searched the articles I had already cited and reviewed for examples to be used in the classroom. When this method failed to produce useable material, I again went to OneSearch and Google Scholar for additional articles related to the topics. It is interesting to note that most of the articles I used during this section of the literature review came from initial searches on Google Scholar, which I was then able to find on OneSearch. I had used identical search parameters and phrasing, but the algorithm used by Google seemed more refined.

            Finally, I amassed all the articles I had used and cited to discuss the main theoretical points and for the application portion of the literature review on Ball State’s OneSearch and allowed the “Temp Folder” to alphabetize and format my references so I could copy and paste them into the report.

             

Main Theoretical Ideas	How to Apply the Idea
Knowing and managing one’s emotions	“The self-awareness domain provides the basis for the development of learned competencies such as to perform an accurate self-assessment of the advantages and disadvantages in decision-making processes, which is necessary when [one] must play his/her leading role in his/her work team” (Fernandez-Berrocal, Extremera, 2006). For educators, knowing one’s emotions is the maturity to understand their positive and negative emotions and managing these emotions allows one to conduct accurate self-assessment to understand their role and the impact of their decisions during decision-making process.
Motivating oneself	Achieving buy in from learners/workers/your audience transitions tasks from self-controlled to self-motivated. Self-control is a ‘‘dictatorial’’—other-directed— mode in which the person suppresses her/his own needs to reach an assigned goal and it is associated with effortful task enactment because behavioral energy has to work against negative motivational incentives rather than being supported by positive incentives. Self-regulation, in contrast, is a more democratic—self-congruent—mode to carry out intentions and it is associated with invigoration and not with effortful enactment (Kazen, Kuhl, & Leicht, 2015). This process may be achieved by allowing for more autonomy during the learning process so the goals are less controlled by external sources and can be controlled more internally.
Recognizing emotions in others	The use of empathy in the classroom, especially during interpretation of student feedback and when gaining new information, should help educators navigate through interaction in diverse, multicultural classrooms. Educators can use tools like perspective taking to gain a deeper understanding of their students and empathic concern that communicate shared emotion, feelings and experience with students from diverse backgrounds. To ensure a full understanding of the students and their perspective, teachers must also process the behavioral feedback gained from interactions so future interactions can be modified to achieve positive results.
Handling relationships	The charismatic educator uses the knowledge of their own and others’ emotions to manage the mood and interactions between both themselves and students and students with other students. However, properly handling relationships also allows teachers to maintain dialogue in class where students have a part in guiding the lessons, using their backgrounds to contribute to the material. Teachers attempting to achieve this goal must be adept at asking the right questions, linking the goals of curriculum with student interest or concerns and ensuring the students are comfortable enough to share and be heard without judgement (Christoph & Nystrand, 2001).

 

References

Christoph, J. N., & Nystrand, M. (2001). Taking risks, negotiating relationships: "one teacher's

transition toward a dialogic classroom". Research in the Teaching of English, 36(2), 249-

286.

Fernandez-Berrocal, P., & Extremera, N. (2006). Emotional intelligence: A theoretical and

empirical review of its first 15 years of history. Psicothema, 18, 7-12.

Israelashvili, J., Oosterwijk, S., Sauter, D., & Fischer, A. (2019). Knowing me, knowing you:

Emotion differentiation in oneself is associated with recognition of others’

emotions. Cognition and Emotion, 33(7), 1461-1471.

Kazén, M., Kazén, M., Kuhl, J., Kuhl, J., Leicht, E., & Leicht, E. (2015). When the going gets

tough…: Self-motivation is associated with invigoration and fun. Psychological

Research, 79(6), 1064-1076. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-014-0631-z.

MacKeracher, Dorothy. 2004. Making sense of adult learning. Toronto: University of Toronto

Press.

Roberts, R. (1995). Feeling One's Emotions and Knowing Oneself. Philosophical Studies: An

International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition, 77(2/3), 319-338. Retrieved

February 17, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/4320571.

Warren, C. A., & Warren, C. A. (2014). Towards a pedagogy for the application of empathy in

culturally diverse classrooms. The Urban Review, 46(3), 395- 419. 

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-013-0262-5.