Can principals' emotional intelligence matter to school turnarounds?

Abstract

Through the literature review, the study aims to explore the relationship between the emotional intelligence (EI) of principals and the turnarounds of low-performing schools and generate some hypotheses regarding this issue. Rigorous, empirical studies published in the last 15 years are selected and reviewed around three relevant topics: the variables associated with EI, the problems facing low-performing schools and the effective leader behaviours to turn around struggling schools. Special attention is paid to the EI models and measures employed by these studies, as well as the consistency of their findings. It is hypothesized that a principals' EI might be linked to some variables relevant to school turnarounds. Future studies that test these hypotheses may have implications for principal selection and leadership development at low-achieving schools.

Investigating trait emotional intelligence among school leaders: demonstrating a useful self-assessment approach

“…We also do not investigate the extent to which EI creates or determines resilience in different school environments (Allen 2009(Allen , 2011, or the impact of EI on relationships between students and teachers. Whilst there were no differences in EI between the two schools sampled, another limitation is the lack of investigation of EI as a mediating factor for improving weak school performance (Cai 2011). Finally, we have not investigated the more negative personality sides of EI research, discussed later in the concluding remarks (Cliffe 2011).…”

Educational Leaders and Emotions

“…Evidences of leaders' EI abilities. Despite the claims that high EI is crucial to successful educational interactions and leadership (Cai, 2011;Zorn & Boler, 2007), there is no evidence (other than that based on self-perceptions) to support the notion that educational leaders have high EI abilities that enable them to better read other peoples' emotions or better regulate their own. Thus, we recommend that future researchers explore leaders' EI using EI ability measures such as the Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test , which covers an array of EI abilities, or the Diagnostic Analysis of Nonverbal Accuracy Test of Facial Expressions (Nowicki & Duke, 2001), which can be used to explore leaders' cognitive empathy.…”

“…Blase and Blase (2004) noted that "an awareness and understanding of emotions (even as they occur), the ability to manage one's emotions, and the ability to express emotions in appropriate ways, given the context, are regarded as critical to effective school leadership" (p. 258). Thus, leaders with high EI may conduct themselves more adaptively and effectively, demonstrate more transformational leadership, and thereby promote desired organizational outcomes that can turn low-performing schools around (Cai, 2011).…”

Emotional intelligence can make a difference: The impact of principals’ emotional intelligence on teaching strategy mediated by instructional leadership

“…The results revealed that all four dimensions of EI emerged as key emotional components to support the work of principals as instructional leaders. Considering the scarcity of empirical evidence detailing the role of using emotions intelligently in school leadership (Berkovich and Eyal 2017;Cai, 2011), particularly the one that relates to instruction, this paper offers empirical evidence that principals' EI predicted their instructional leadership behaviors. This conclusion aligns with findings from previous studies that report a positive relationship between principals' EI and their leadership behaviors (Bipath, 2008;Goldring et al, 2015;Grobler et al, 2017).…”