Emotional intelligence training intervention among trainee teachers: a quasi-experimental study

Abstract Background: Emotional intelligence (EI) has often been linked to improvements in professional performance. Indeed, generic competencies related to EI have been included in university curricula. However, learning EI involves significant time and effort on the part of students, and this may hinder the acquisition of specific content for each degree. In this study, an intervention to develop EI in higher education students is described and evaluated. Methods: The intervention consisted of eight group sessions performed in a regular course aiming to increase EI. The sessions included strategies and training on perceiving and understanding one's own emotions and others' emotions, identifying and understanding the impact one's own feelings in adopting decisions, expressing one's own emotions and the stress experienced, and managing both one's own emotions and emotions of others. Participants were 192 students studying for a Master of Primary Education degree. A quasi-experimental nonequivalent control group pretest-posttest design was adopted. The effectiveness of the intervention was evaluated using multi-level analyses. Results: The results showed a significant improvement in the EI of students in the experimental group compared with the control group. Conclusions: This research demonstrates that it is possible to develop EI in higher education students, without hindering the acquisition of specific content competencies and, therefore, without interfering with their academic performance and without overburdening students with work outside the classroom. Trial registration: The experiment has been registered in the Initial Deposit of the Spanish Center for Sociological Research (CIS). 7/6/2015. http://www.cis.es/cis/opencms/ES/index.html.

Efectos del aprendizaje colaborativo en el uso de estrategias de afrontamiento / Effects of collaborative learning on the use of coping strategies

El objetivo de este trabajo es demostrar que el uso de técnicas de aprendizaje colaborativo en el aula permite a los alumnos utilizar estrategias mediante las cuales aprenden a afrontar situaciones problemáticas derivadas de las relaciones interpersonales que se producen en el espacio educativo, especialmente entre iguales. Participaron 50 niños y niñas de primer curso de Educación Secundaria Obligatoria (edad media 12.4 años) distribuidos en dos grupos: experimental y control. En el primer grupo, se utilizó un programa basado en el aprendizaje individual asistido por un equipo; en el segundo, se utilizó una metodología de corte tradicional. Para probar las hipótesis formuladas, utilizamos un diseño de grupo de control pretest-postest con grupo de control no equivalente. Consideramos la inteligencia como covariable para mantener constantes sus efectos sobre los resultados independientemente del efecto del programa. Empleamos un análisis de varianza split-plot univariado como procedimiento estadístico. Los resultados muestran que los alumnos que siguen un programa de aprendizaje colaborativo utilizan más y mejores estrategias de afrontamiento que aquellos que no lo hacen. Los participantes de los grupos experimental y control parten de una situación de igualdad para separarse en la situación postest: el grupo experimental aumenta significativamente sus puntuaciones con respecto al grupo de control en lo que se refiere al uso de las estrategias de afrontamiento, y sus participantes tienden a compartir sus problemas con los demás en mayor medida que los miembros del grupo de control, todo ello independientemente del CI.

The purpose of this work is to show that the use of collaborative learning techniques in the classroom allows students to use strategies through which they learn to cope with problematic situations derived from the interpersonal relations that take place at school, especially among peers. The participants have been 50 boys and girls, in first year of compulsory secondary education (average age, 12.4) distributed into two groups: experimental and control. In the first group Team Assisted Individualization has been used. In the second group a traditional methodology has been adopted. A pretest-posttest control group design with non-equivalent control group has been used to test the hypotheses. Intelligence has been used as covariable to keep its effect on the results constant, independently of the effects of the program. A univariate split-plot analysis has been used as statistic procedure. The results show that those students on a collaborative learning program use more and more effective coping strategies than those who are not on a collaborative program. The participants in both the experimental and the control groups set out from a situation of equality to move farther away from each other in the posttest situation: the experimental group noticeably increases scores over the control group as regards the use of coping strategies, and the participants in the experimental group tend to share their problems with their peers in a greater scale than the participants in the control group, independently of the IQ.