Conflict in the Classroom: How Teachers’ Emotional Intelligence Influences Conflict Management

Sabina Valente,Abílio Afonso Lourenço

doi:10.3389/feduc.2020.00005

Abstract

Distinct studies showed a positive relationship between emotional intelligence and conflict management. However, there is a lack of research on how teachers’ emotional intelligence influences conflict management in the classroom. Since much more needs to be learned about how teachers' emotional skills related to classroom practice, this research has emerged, and the purpose went to examine how teachers’ emotional intelligence influences classroom conflict management. Moreover, it also was analyzed the relationship between gender, teaching experience and academic training with teachers’ emotional intelligence. The sample comprised of 382 Portuguese teachers. The Emotional Skills and Competence Questionnaire for Teachers, the Rahim Organizational Conflict Inventory II - Portuguese Version in School Context and a personal and professional data inquiry were been used as instruments. Structural equation modeling showed that teachers who tend to have higher levels of emotional intelligence employ more integrating and compromising strategies for conflict management, therefore constructively managing conflict in the classroom. In light of these findings, emotional skills programs should be included in teachers’ academic training to promote their emotional intelligence and give them tools to constructively manage classroom conflict.

Highlights

In recent years, conflict situations are a frequent reality in Portuguese schools, and their identification, understanding, and management characterize a continuous concern area for the psychologists and education science professionals, fundamentally because of their impact on the teachers’ performance
Emotional Skills and Competence Questionnaire for Teachers (ESCQ-T) includes 45 items distributed among three subscales: (a) Perceive and understand emotions, 15 items (e.g., When I see how a student feels, I usually know what has happened to him); (b) Express and classify emotions, 14 items (e.g., I can express my emotions well); and (c) Manage and regulate emotions, 16 items (e.g., I can stay in a good mood even if something unpleasant happens in the classroom)
In so far as the academic training is concerned, the results indicated that teachers’ with more academic training displayed more emotional intelligence (EI) in line with previous studies conducted in Portuguese teachers who showed that teachers with higher academic qualifications had higher values of EI (Fernandes, 2015; Valente, 2019)

Summary

Introduction

Conflict situations are a frequent reality in Portuguese schools, and their identification, understanding, and management characterize a continuous concern area for the psychologists and education science professionals, fundamentally because of their impact on the teachers’ performance. These conflicts affect the quality of the learning environment and the teachers’ performance. Considering that negative emotions are related to conflict experiences in the workplace, Rispens and Demerouti (2016) indicated that it is essential to investigate the relationship between EI and school conflict In this sense, the relevance of present research, and considering the lack of studies that report the relationship between teachers’ EI and classroom conflict management, is to contribute with empirical evidence, helping to overcome the existing gap on the investigation of these two constructs, in the teacher–student relationship

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