Development of students’ emotional intelligence and minimizing their stress in the classroom
The goal of the article is to find out whether the development of students’ emotional intelligence can contribute to decreasing stress in the classroom. Contemporary life is full of stress due to political and social instability, which makes minimizing stress in the classroom a significant topic. The attention paid nowadays to emotions makes dealing with them an important tool for success in education. An online teacher survey was conducted to clarify Georgian teachers’ views on EI application in the educational process and its role in stress reduction. The respondents who volunteered to participate in the research were mostly females who came from the capital and three different towns in Georgia, representing both public and private schools, which still makes the study valuable, irrespective the limited number of participants (totally 44). The obtained results were analyzed by descriptive statistics methods. The obtained conclusions are: Georgian teachers are aware of the role of low-stress atmosphere in the classroom; the majority of the respondents believe that EI can and should be developed by teachers in class; special activities (positive feedback, humour, as well as games and other entertaining activities) should be used to increase students’ EI, and teachers suppose that a high level of students’ emotional intelligence has a positive impact on the productive classroom environment.
Keywords: emotional intelligence, stress, trait emotional intelligence, ability emotional intelligence, academic achievement, classroom environment
