Understanding emotional and social intelligence among English language teachers

Emotions and social relationships are at the centre of all human behaviour. Teaching in particular requires the careful handling of students? and teachers? own emotions as well as the sensitive promotion of positive social relationships between the teacher and students and among students. These emotional and social competences are key components of effective classroom management and teacher competences. However, there has been surprisingly little research on how these competences function in actual classrooms and how best they can be fostered. Language teaching in particular depends on these competences given the intercultural, social and interpersonal character of communication in a foreign language. In what follows, we review the literature on emotional intelligence (EI) and social intelligence (SI) within psychology and education, and argue for the relevance and importance of both constructs specifically within English language teaching (ELT). We report on the findings of a mixed-methods empirical study on the EI and SI of English language teachers across the globe, and then examine in more detail the beliefs and practices of highly emotionally and socially intelligent teachers in the UK and Austria. We conclude the paper by reflecting on the implications of the findings for language teaching and language teacher education.