Teaching with Emotional Intelligence

A step-by-step guide for Higher and Further Education professionals

Alan Mortiboys

• Editore: Routledge
• Anno: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136655470
• Edizione: 2
• Argomento: Education
• Categoria: Education General

The way teachers shape and handle their own feelings and those of their learners is central to the success of learning. Now in its second edition, Teaching with Emotional Intelligence shows how to manage this influential yet neglected area of learning and teaching. This practical book looks at how lecturers and teachers can develop and use their emotional intelligence to enhance their teaching and their students' learning.

Taking the reader step-by-step through the learning process and looking at the relationship from the perspective of both the teacher and the learner, this book will help the reader to:

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• plan the emotional environment;

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• learn how to relate and listen to learners effectively;

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• read and respond to the feelings of individuals and groups;

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• handle and reveal their feelings as a teacher, as appropriate;

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• develop self-awareness as a teacher;

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• recognise their prejudices and preferences;

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• improve non-verbal communication;

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• plan for the physical experience of learners;

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• deal with their learners' expectations, comments and questions.

This book contains a number of revised activities, checklists and points for deeper reflection as well as new chapters on teaching with emotional intelligence with international students, in online learning and in working one-to-one with students. It will help all teaching professionals encourage their learners to become more engaged, creative, positive and motivated.

Chapter 1

The emotionally intelligent
teacher

This chapter includes the following activities:

1.1 The qualities of an emotionally intelligent teacher

1.2 Providing evidence of the use of emotional intelligence

1.3 Planning for the feelings you wish to generate in your learners

1.4 Being present

What is an emotionally intelligent teacher? How would you know one if you saw one? The chapter titles in the rest of this book give you a sense of what it means to teach with emotional intelligence. This includes: creating a positive emotional climate; recognizing and working with the feelings of yourself and of your learners; using listening skills with groups as well as with individuals; dealing with learners' expectations; and having a developed self-awareness.

Research into desirable teacher attributes identifies characteristics of emotional intelligence in teachers without necessarily giving them that name. Joe Harkin reported on vocational education learners aged 17–19 and found that: ‘affective behaviours are the most important determinants of student satisfaction with teachers … [These behaviours include] recognizing individuals, listening to students, showing respect, being friendly, sharing a joke, making some self-disclosure’ (Harkin 1998: 339, 346).

One of the outstanding teachers interviewed by Cynthia Weston and Lynn McAlpine says, ‘it is how much you care rather than how much you know; caring is very significant’ (Weston and McAlpine 1998: 147). This echoes the findings of Sarah Moore and Nyiel Kuol (see page 2) – ‘who a teacher is with their students seemed to be more relevant to this group of respondents than what a teacher does with his/her subject’ (Moore and Kuol 2007: 90).

Barbara Harrell Carson gathered the responses of former students, who graduated over a period of 26 years from Rollins College in Orlando, about teachers whom they perceived to be most effective. She found that ‘the single quality the Rollins alumni most frequently associated with effective teachers – more often than brilliance and love of subject and even more often than enthusiasm in the classroom – was a special attitude toward and relationship with students’ (Carson 1996: 14). The respondents ‘connected their transformative experiences … with a complex and personal encounter linking professor, student, and subject matter in an exchange as much affective as cognitive’ (ibid.: 11).

Activities 1.1 and 1.2, which follow later in this chapter, invite you to explore further the characteristics of emotionally intelligent teachers.

Teaching with emotional intelligence entails a shift in priorities. For example, the emotionally intelligent teacher seeks to have confidence not just in their content and materials but also in their flexibility and readiness to respond; they put energy into planning a teaching session but also into preparing to meet the learners; they see their self-development as emphasizing not just subject expertise but also the development of their self-knowledge.

In other words, emotionally intelligent teachers distribute their energies differently. With reference to the diagram on page 3, they put at least as much energy into using and developing emotional intelligence as into maintaining their subject expertise and developing their pedagogical skills. This means always being aware of how the affective intertwines with the cognitive in learning and in their teaching, and ensuring that what they say and do always has an eye to influencing or responding to feelings, both on their part and on the part of the learners. This includes being both proactive and reactive: proactive as in activity 1.3 which follows and in most of the activities in chapters 2 to 5, which are about planning; reactive as in the sense of being alert for opportunities to attend to feelings and seizing them, such as when responding to learners' comments. This is reflected in activity 1.4 which follows and in most activities in chapters 6 to 9.

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