The purpose of this study was to examine the correlation among teacher's emotional expressiveness, teacher's emotional intelligence and young children's emotional intelligence, and then look into whether or not teacher's emotional intelligence moderat...
The purpose of this study was to examine the correlation among teacher's emotional expressiveness, teacher's emotional intelligence and young children's emotional intelligence, and then look into whether or not teacher's emotional intelligence moderates young children's emotional intelligence in the relationship between teacher's emotional expressiveness and young children's emotional intelligence. For this, study questions were established as follows:
Question 1: 'What is the correlation among teacher's emotional expressiveness, teacher's emotional intelligence and young children's emotional intelligence?'
Question 2: 'Does teacher's emotional intelligence have a moderating effect in the relationship between teacher's emotional expressiveness and young children's emotional intelligence?'
Study subjects were 223 teachers and 892 children of 3, 4 and 5 years old at kindergartens and child-care centers in Seoul and Gyeonggi areas. Following study tools were used: In order to test teacher's emotional expressiveness, this study used FEQ (Family Emotional Expressiveness Questionnaire), developed by Halberstadt (1986), modified/adapted by Choe Gi-yeong and Wu Su-gyeong (2001) as the title of 'Teacher Emotional Expressiveness Questionnaire', and used by Lee Han-ae (2008). In order to test teacher's emotional intelligence, this study utilized WLEIS (Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale), developed by Wong and Law (2002), adapted by Han Ji-hyeon and Yu Tae-yong (2005), and modified/supplemented by Jo Hye-jin and Kim Su-yeon (2011). And in order to test young children's emotional intelligence, the emotional intelligence scale, developed by Salovey and Mayer (1997) and modified/supplemented by Lee Byeong-rae (1997), was used.
Collected data were analyzed with SPSS 23.0 program. In order to examine the correlation among teacher's emotional expressiveness, teacher's emotional intelligence and young children's emotional intelligence, Pearson's correlation coefficient was calculated. And in order to examine the moderating effect of teacher's emotional intelligence in the relationship between teacher's emotional expressiveness and young children's emotional intelligence, hierarchical regression analysis was carried out.
Study findings are as follows:
First, there were significant correlations in the relationship between teacher's emotional expressiveness, teacher's emotional intelligence and young children's emotional intelligence.
Second, all the such sub-variables of teacher's emotional intelligence as perception of self-emotion, perception of other's emotion, emotional use and emotional moderation had significant moderating effect in the relationship between teacher's positive emotional expressiveness and young children's emotional intelligence. This finding can be interpreted into that teacher's emotional intelligence moderates the effect of teacher's emotional expressiveness on young children's emotional intelligence. On the other hand, all the sub-variables of teacher's emotional intelligence had no significant moderating effect in the relationship between teacher's negative emotional expressiveness and young children's emotional intelligence. This finding seems to suggest that teacher's emotional intelligence cannot moderate the effect of teacher's negative emotional expressiveness on young children's emotional intelligence.
By testing the moderating effect of teacher's emotional intelligence in the relationship between teacher's emotional expressiveness and young children's emotional intelligence, this study found out that teacher's emotional intelligence is an important factor that can moderate both teacher's emotional expressiveness and young children's emotional intelligence. Study findings seemed to confirm the importance of teacher's emotional intelligence again. In order to enhance teacher's emotional intelligence, it seems to be necessary to carry out follow-up studies, together with groping after a variety of personal/social strategies.