English Teachers in Vietnam and the Relationship Between their Resilience and Emotional Intelligence

Abstract

Various studies have demonstrated the importance of emotional intelligence (EI) and resilience as abilities that teachers should possess in order to be effective. It has even been shown that there is a significant positive connection between EI and resilience. This study aimed to investigate the levels of emotional intelligence and resilience of English teachers in Vietnam. It further sought to confirm the connection between EI and resilience. Through snowball sampling, 11 Filipino and 16 Vietnamese English teachers were selected to be the respondents of this study. The Schutte emotional intelligence test was used to measure the respondents’ EI while the Brief Resiliency Scale was utilized to measure their resilience. The findings showed that 40.74% of all the respondents had moderate EI scores while 59.26% had high EI scores. In addition, the results found that the Vietnamese, the females and those without a romantic partner had higher EI. However, these differences were not statistically significant. In terms of resilience, 7.4% of all the respondents had low resilience scores, 70.27% had moderate resilience scores while 22.22% had high resilience scores. The results showed further that the Vietnamese, the males and the respondents with a romantic partner had higher resilience. However, these differences were not statistically significant. A low positive relationship between the respondents’ EI and resilience scale scores was found but this relationship was not statistically significant. The findings of this study were unable to confirm the connection between EI and resilience among the respondents.