An empirical examination of the role of emotional knowledge in the teaching profession

Abstract

Modern society has plunged us into a maelstrom of telematics information with little control. Teachers from any field must be trained in order to pass on the confidence and values to withstand this media pressure to their students. To this end, one of the areas of knowledge on which greater emphasis should be placed is that related to emotional intelligence. The study reported on here focused on this type of knowledge among professional music studies teachers in conservatories, asking what the perception of this group on the aforementioned area of knowledge is and to what extent it has been received during their initial training. For this investigation we used a quantitative methodological approach, and via descriptive analysis, a non-parametric Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and inferential analysis, we found significant differences regarding the two scales considered: level of agreement and emotional intelligence training received. Furthermore, regarding the descriptive variables, significant differences were also found through the application of the Mann-Whitney U and Kruskal-Wallis test.

Keywords: emotional intelligence; initial training; knowledge; teachers