Developing their emotional intelligence improves the classroom performance of student teachers. How can they be supported in this?

A project conducted in a primary school explored the hypothesis that student teachers could reflect upon feedback to improve their use of emotional intelligence in the classroom, thereby improving their teaching as defined by the required professional teaching standards. Four student teachers and their teacher mentors participated with a teacher educator to provide two data sets - joint lesson observations records and semi-structured interviews. The joint observations were conducted with the teacher educator using an observational checklist based on an emotional intelligence competencies framework and the mentor assessing demonstration of the required professional standards. Two lessons per student were observed with a four week interval. Shortly after the second observation, student teachers and mentors were interviewed in peer pairs. Qualitative analysis indicated linked improvements in performance, in terms of emotional intelligence and the professional standards. While wary of generalising from such a small sample, the study suggests a place for learning communities of good practice and support to develop emotionally-intelligent teaching. The study concludes that the improvements are first indications of the benefits of developing emotional intelligence in student teachers and that further research, with larger samples and the use of other feedback methods, has a contribution to make to teacher education