The Relationship between Iranian EFL Teachers’ Professional Development and Their Emotional Intelligence

Goharshad Majidinia

Abstract


Teachers have a key role in students' educational success or failure, it is therefore important to do more research on teacher related factors. Teachers' emotional intelligence and professional development seem to be significant factors in students’ achievement. However, little is known about the relationship between these two factors in English as a foreign/ second language (EFL/ESL) learning environment. Therefore, the present research aimed to investigate the relationship between teachers’ emotional intelligence and their professional development.  In this study, 60 English language teachers were selected through convenience sampling method. They all have taught English more than five years and were from Gorgan, Iran. Their age ranged from 30 to 50. Two instruments were used: Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (Bar-On, 1997) and Professional Development Questionnaire (Varies, Jansen & Grift, 2013). After data collection, the data were analyzed in the software SPSS. First, Kolmogorov-Smirnov was run to test data normality. Since the data were normal, Pearson correlation test was run to see whether there would be any relationship between the participants’ professional development and their emotional intelligence. The results showed that there was a positive and significant relationship between Iranian EFL teachers’ professional development and their emotional intelligence. The finding has some implications for EFL teachers and teacher trainers; teachers will be more successful in their professional development by developing their emotional intelligence.


Keywords


emotional intelligence, teacher professional development, Iranian EFL teachers

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References


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