Development of Students' Emotional Intelligence: Participative Classroom Environments in Higher Education

INTRODUCTION The purpose of the present study is to explore the role participative classroom environments play in the development of college student's emotional intelligence (EI), and whether EI is related to academic achievement. Emotional intelligence has become an increasingly popular topic in recent years in the management and behavioral science literature. Researchers now broadly acknowledge that emotions play a critical role in organizational life and performance (Ashforth and Humphrey, 1995; Ashkanasy, 2004; Ashkanasy and Daus, 2005; Hartel, Zerbe, and Ashkanasy, 2004). Emotional intelligence can be regarded as a central part of current zeitgeist (Mayer, Salovey and Caruso, 2000) or "affective revolution" (Barsade, Brief, and Spataro, 2003) which emerges as a result of discontent with previously adopted predominantly cognitive and rational paradigms. EI has also become a concern for companies that face a serious gap between required and actual level of their employees' emotional abilities. Although employers of new college graduates emphasize the importance of "soft skills," they are substantially less satisfied with graduates' interpersonal and emotional competencies than with their conceptual and analytical skills (Rynes, Trank, Lawson, and Ilies, 2003; Shivpuri and Kim, 2004; Whetten and Cameron, 2005). Acknowledgement of this discrepancy makes it essential for educators to address the issue of enhancing students' emotional intelligence in academic institutions. Some empirical findings suggest that emotional intelligence, unlike IQ, can be improved through learning and development opportunities. (Ashkanasy and Daus, 2005; Dulewicz and Higgs, 2004). Studies devoted to the development of emotional intelligence during the formal educational process suggest tackling the problem in a direct fashion, by including the topic in particular courses and activities. Tucker, Sojka, Barone, and McCarthy (2000) recommend incorporating the process for the development of emotional intelligence outlined by Cherniss and Goleman (1998) into the business school curriculum. According to these authors an overall program should entail self-assessment of emotional intelligence for freshmen as part of their orientation; integrating experiential exercises into specific courses, so that students can practice using emotional skills; and assessing EI of graduating seniors (Tucker et al., 2000). Liptak (2005) advocates teaching emotional intelligence during personal and career counseling of students. Brown (2003) describes interesting emotional skills-building exercises which can be incorporated into organizational behavior courses. Whetten and Cameron (2005) and Clark Callister, and Wallace (2003) make a similar suggestion regarding a management skills course. Ornstein and Nelson (2006) make a convincing argument for teaching emotional competencies to students preparing for a business class overseas, because experiencing a foreign culture imposes high emotional demands on both students and trip leaders. We fully accept the value of incorporating the topic of emotional intelligence in specific courses and activities. At the same time, this direct approach is limited to the portion of students who participate in these courses. It would be worthwhile to investigate if described practices can be complemented by other more indirect approaches which make development of emotional skills possible for a larger student population. Therefore the central research question of this study is whether participative class environments, in general, result in improvement of emotional intelligence. This has not been investigated in previous studies. At the same time, we want to examine whether increased emotional intelligence leads to better academic achievement. This would bolster the argument that it is important to develop emotional intelligence of college students. WHAT IS EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE? One of the problems in reviewing past research on emotional intelligence is the different incompatible definitions of what encompasses emotional intelligence. …