Infusing EI into Higher Education: Three Curriculum Strategies

Educators aiming to teach emotional intelligence in the classroom are faced with a broad spectrum of possibilities. Should curriculum present theoretical models and definitions, or focus on practical applications? Can EI skills and concepts be infused into other course topics, or does a truly research-based treatment require exclusive focus? What sort of course structure, style, and content will best facilitate the apprehension of EI as a business tool, psychological construct, or a catalyst for personal growth?

Korrel Kanoy, Heather Lee, and Dawn Dillon have first-hand experience instructing students in EI theory and principles at Peace College in North Carolina, and have developed three distinct strategies for doing so.

1. Survey Model
Courses based on the survey model aim to impart a broad understanding of emotional intelligence (and its implications and general applications) through an exclusive focus on EI. This structure is an excellent choice for an introductory-level course in the psychology or business faculties. A survey course’s primary priority is to introduce the concept of EI in the context of its developmental history; reviewing early psychological conceptions of human intelligence and the subsequent evolution of those conceptions provides a solid foundation for a discussion of the existing models EI. Further background and support for both historical and contemporary perspectives on emotional intelligence is supplied through an examination of the scientific literature that inspired its development. The secondary priority of a survey-modeled course often involves imparting direct comprehension of modern EI assessment through the administration of a scientific assessment. In the Emotional Intelligence survey course at Peace College, each student receives an individual administration of the EQ-i, and participates in an exploration of the assessment’s 5 scales and 15 subscales with an eye towards their results. Subsequently, students develop and initiate their own personalized EI self-development plan. Grading for a survey course takes into account content mastery (reading responses, classroom discussion), EI skill building (completion of exercises and self-development plan), and a group project (working with a team to develop four EI development exercises for first-year students).

2. Infusion Model
The infusion model offers a framework for incorporating EI concepts and skills into a pre-existing course. Its aim is to provide students with an understanding of how emotional intelligence connects to a core course topic. This approach is well-suited to a number of potential classes, for example in:

• first-year experience courses: the focus may be on the link between EI and successful academic performance;
• political science or business management courses: the focus may be on the link between EI and leadership, and the perception of a leader’s efficacy;
• communications classes: the focus may be on the connection between EI skills and conflict resolution, or the management of difficult interpersonal relationships.

Although the term “emotional intelligence” may never be used in some infusion model courses, instructors at Peace College have found that comprehension improves when EI is defined and explored both as a scientific model and as a means for personal growth. During EI-infused classes at Peace College, a measure of EI is administered to each student along with a feedback report as a means of directly introducing and personalizing the concept of EI. The instructors also recommend that if any literature linking emotional intelligence with the course’s core topic exists, it should be distributed and assigned as required reading. If no such literature exists, the instructor should make sure to otherwise illuminate the connection between the two areas of study, and facilitate the exploration of the course’s core topics through the lens of emotional intelligence. Coursework/grading should include the composition of an original paper analyzing the impacts of EI strengths and weaknesses in a professional, academic, or personal field related to focus of the course. In Peace College’s political science class, students are asked to select an emotional skill (such as optimism or impulse control) and write about how it affected the career of a selected politician. They must also develop a self-improvement plan based on their own assessment results.

3. Application Model
The application model suggests a methodology for presenting emotional intelligence as a potential solution to a specific disciplinary or professional challenge. Before beginning to develop a course based on the application model, instructors should ensure that there is significant research that demonstrates the appropriacy, efficacy, and legality of employing EI solutions to a situation that falls within the purview of the course. For instance, a course in human resource management could address the use of emotional intelligence assessments as a component of employee selection and coaching processes. The first step in such a course is always to convey an understanding of the research that supports the use of EI assessments in the specified situation (likely focusing on the predictive validity of the EQ-i in such a setting). Once the efficacy of the chosen tool has been established, students should perform an analysis of the challenge or problem in order to determine the specific applicability of particular EI concepts. In the case of employee selection or promotion, this could be an attempt to determine which EI subscales are most closely associated with success or high performance in a particular professional field. Students should then be tasked with developing an EI-based solution to the problem or challenge. For instance, by creating behavioral interview questions that will elicit in employees or applicants responses indicative of their relative skill level in the EI subscales that are deemed to be relevant to success in the given position or profession. An application model course typically allows for discussion of the validity scales of an assessment (eg, Positive Impression, Negative Impression, Inconsistency Index), as they play an important role in determining the accuracy of individual results in a self-assessment.

Whether you are building an EI survey course, infusing EI concepts into a related topic, or applying an EI methodology to a specific challenge, we hope that you will share your experiences with us. Please email ceo@mhs.com to contribute your ideas to this ever-growing field of study.

For more information on this topic, and others relating emotional intelligence to higher education, please refer to the Higher Education Symposium on Emotional Intelligence proceedings.

Teaching Emotional Skills to Kids

Parents, teachers, and counselors of school-age children and teens will welcome this free set of emotional skill-building activities available from MHS. Five different workbooks provide age-appropriate games and exercises based on the Youth Version of the world’s most popular EI measure, the EQ-i.

Here you’ll find activities that can help build awareness of emotions and character-building concepts such as Self-Regard and Assertiveness. These activities have been used with young people ages 2–18 since 2002, and offer an excellent resource for anyone interested in building emotional awareness.

Download your free Emotional Intelligence Activities here:

• Children ages 2–4 [PDF]
• Children ages 5–7 [PDF]
• Children ages 8–10 [PDF]
• Children ages 11–12 [PDF]
• Teens ages 13–18 [PDF]

For more information on the EQ-i:YV assessment, please visit our website.

Resiliency, Teaching, and Emotional Intelligence

I’ve already reported on a number of studies linking emotional intelligence in educators and school principals to various performance criteria, but there always seems to be room for more validation studies. A recent dissertation by Aileen Thompson Bumphus looked at the relationship between resilience and emotional intelligence in educational leaders.

The study was designed to help in advancing the recruitment, identification, development, and retention of effective school leaders. Aileen looked at a group of 63 public school principals from five states – Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Texas. These leaders were administered the EQ-i, a measure of resilience, and a leadership questionnaire.

Aileen found a significant positive relationship between self-reported emotional intelligence and resilience among school principals. When she added school leadership into the model, the relationship became stronger, indicating that school leadership played a significantly positive role in the relationship between emotional intelligence and resilience among school principals.

In addition, a principal’s general mood, as measured by the Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) was a significant predictor of resilience. Aileen’s research supports previous studies, which showed a strong positive relationship between a school principal’s emotional intelligence and leadership. Specifically, the strong relationship was found to be between the principal’s self-perception of leadership and the Intrapersonal and Interpersonal Emotional Quotient (EQ) subscales on the EQ-i.

Reference: Bumphus, Aileen Thompson. The emotional intelligence and resilience of school leaders: An investigation into leadership behaviors. Abstract and full article available from the American Psychological Association (APA).

Emotional Intelligence as a Strategy for Scholarship Retention

The National Scholarship Providers Association (NSPA) will hold it’s Annual Conferenence, The Rhythm of Success: From Scholarships to Graduates, in New Orleans on October 27 – 30.

Jon Duffy, Senior Assessment Consultant at MHS, will be joining Kevin Byrne and Oscar Sweeten-Lopez of the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation for a presentation titled Emotional Intelligence as a Strategy for Scholarship Retention: More than a Check.

The mission of NSPA is to advance the collective impact of scholarship providers, and the scholarships they award, through exchanging best practices, offering professional development opportunities, and promoting student access and success in higher education. For more information on NSPA please visit: www.scholarshipproviders.org.

Infusing Emotional Intelligence into FYE Courses at Peace College

The following article has been submitted by Korrel Kanoy, Dean of Academic Affairs and Professor of Psychology at Peace College. In it she details how her campus has had great success applying Emotional Intelligence with their first year students, and she provides advice for other campuses who are considering incorporating emotional and social topics into their first year curriculum.

Peace College, a private, liberal arts college for women, began infusing emotional intelligence (EI) concepts into our First Year Experience (FYE) class during the fall 2008 semester.  Our class is designed to help students make a successful transition to college and what better way to do that than to equip students with EI knowledge and skills?  We found it easy to infuse EI concepts throughout our FYE curriculum and would expect most colleges to have the same experience. 

Consideration of the value of a liberal arts education becomes meaningful to 18 year olds when contextualized in terms of their goals and ambitions (self actualization) or even the level  of understanding related to why they came to college (self awareness). A discussion of study skills becomes even more relevant if impulse control (study first, party later) also becomes a meaningful part of the conversation.  Discussions about roommate issues and changing relationships with family members become more meaningful when independence, empathy and interpersonal relationship constructs are added to the discussion.  The list goes on. 

In fact, we found it so easy to incorporate EI into our FYE curriculum that it became difficult to know where to stop.  By the end of the semester, my students were drawing connections to EI even when I wasn’t doing so. When we were covering identity development related to career choice, A particularly astute student commented that it would be hard to develop a meaningful career identity without first having well developed self awareness and a certain level of independence from parents who might try to influence choices.

To initiate this program, we trained 21 faculty and staff members to interpret the EQ-i® and each first-year student met with a trained interpreter for 30 minutes.  After completing the interpretation, each student designed a self-development plan based on two EI areas she wanted to improve.  Development plans were shared and discussed with instructors and students began making the connections between EI and their personal and academic success.  For example, one student in my FYE class made the connection that she needed to listen more and talk less during class (her empathy and interpersonal relationship scores were low), and as a result, her relationships with her peers improved noticeably.

One word of caution though – before implementing required EQ-i testing, be sure your Counseling Center staff understands the EQ-i and is prepared for a possible increase in requests for meetings.  Our staff noticed about a 30% increase in appointments right after EQ-i interpretations were completed.  Apparently, students’ self awareness or the desire to get more structured help improving EI led students to seek out our counselors.  And, in a few cases, a score or scores (e.g., self regard)were so low that faculty referred the student for counseling.

One final note – our preliminary analysis of data from these entering first-year students showed that EI skills were predictive in two areas.  First, higher optimism, along with better high school grades and higher verbal SAT score were predictive of better academic performance by mid-term of the first semester.  By the end of the term, two EI subscales emerged as predictors of first to second semester retention.  Higher optimism and better impulse control predicted retention better than any academic measure.   As a result of this preliminary data, we plan to infuse more programming related to developing impulse control and optimism in our first-year orientation programs, our residence life programming and our FYE curriculum.

EI, Emotional Self-Efficacy and Academic Success in British Secondary Schools

The significant progress that educators in the United Kingdom have made in recognizing the importance of Emotional Intelligence and integrating it into school curriculums can be seen in the success of the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) program, on which we have often reported here in the EI Insider. The following study, submitted by Pamela Qualter, a lecturer in the School of Psychology at the University of Lancashire, is further evidence of this dedication to providing students with far more than book smarts.

This study examined the long-term effects of Emotional Intelligence and emotional self-efficacy on scholastic achievement in British adolescents. Participants were 628 male and female secondary school students. They completed the following tests during the first few weeks of secondary school (Year 7): an assessment of EI (MSCEIT YV) and cognitive ability, an assessment of emotional self-efficacy (EQ-i: YV) and personality questionnaires. Academic achievement data were collected at Year 9 and Year 11. Structural equation modeling analyses showed that EI has direct effects on Standard Assessment Tests (SAT) and General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) English performance for boys, but not girls.  In contrast, emotional self efficacy directly predicts SAT and GCSE English scores for girls, but not boys.  In science, EI and emotional self-efficacy do not predict SAT or GCSE performance for boys; for girls, EI directly impacts on SAT scores, and indirectly predicts GCSE Science performance via its relationship with SAT performance. 

Further analysis showed that emotional self-efficacy and EI act as moderators of the effects of cognitive ability on academic achievement.  For example, it was found that boys who have high emotional self-efficacy and high cognitive abilities outperform all other males in GCSE English language and English literature; girls high on EI and cognitive ability perform better than girls of a similar cognitive ability, but lower EI, on GCSE maths, English literature, English language and science. It was therefore concluded that opportunities to develop EI and increase emotional self efficacy may offer educators significant opportunities to improve educational achievement.

Announcing a New EQ-i® Report Option for Higher Education

The new EQ-i ^® Higher Education Report (EQ-i HEd) is the product of many years spent working with campuses to fine tune the EQ-i reporting options to meet the specific needs of Higher Education staff and faculty working with students. Higher Education users already familiar with the EQ-i will find that this new report option delivers all the helpful feedback they’ve come to expect from the assessment, except now the feedback is presented in a format more relevant to students and educators.

The set of three reports that the EQ-i HEd renders offers students and counselors school-specific results in a delivery system geared for optimal understanding, ease of administration, and follow-up. Using the new EQ-i HEd, students take the standard 133-item version of the EQ-i and instantly get a 10-page summary of their top three and lowest two results. Counselors can then generate comprehensive reports that provide interpretation and development strategies for all 15 subscales. These reports are ideal aids for coaching students and incorporating Emotional Intelligence into your class curriculum or campus leadership programs.

You can now download free samples of these reports from our website, and if you think the Higher Education Report may be a good fit on your campus, contact MHS client services for more information.

The Dell Scholars Program: Emotional Components of Student Success

This summer the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation’s Dell Scholars Program will begin a study to determine the Emotional Intelligence competencies that best contribute to the success of their scholars.

The primary purpose of the EI project is to generate strategies and support networks to promote the social and emotional development of every Dell Scholar. The Scholar program is unique in that it places greater emphasis on a student’s determination to succeed than on the student’s academic record and test scores.

This approach of looking beyond grades has prompted program organizers to consider incorporating Emotional Intelligence as a means of developing the potential of prospective scholars. Program director Kevin Byrne is excited about the prospects. “A college education opens so many opportunities for young students to pursue their dreams,” said Byrne, “We hope to send every scholar with everything they need to be successful in school. The students will hopefully inspire others in their families and communities to dream big and empower their minds with higher education.” The following description, taken from the foundation’s website (www.msdf.org and www.dellscholars.org ), goes into more detail on the unique focus of the Dell Scholars Program:

The Dell Scholars Program is a need-based scholarship that recognizes academic potential and determination in underserved and low-income students. Most of the Dell Scholars are first-generation college students, and are chosen because they participate in an approved college readiness program and maintain at least a 2.4 grade point average on a 4.0 scale while dealing with personal responsibilities at home or in their communities. Requirements also include graduation from an accredited high school, demonstrated financial need and intent to enter a bachelor’s degree program at an accredited higher education institution.

Dell Scholars receive $20,000 each to continue their higher education over six years. In addition, the Dell Scholars program provides its students with technology, resources and mentoring to ensure they have the support they need to obtain a college degree. These additional resources have contributed to the program’s retention rate of 89 percent, well above the national average of 22 percent for these students.

More than 1000 scholarships and $14 million in scholarship funds have been awarded by the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation to date.

Byrne and the Dell Scholars program retention manager Oscar Sweeten-Lopez will be sharing additional details of their Emotional Intelligence initiatives during the Higher Education Symposium on Emotional Intelligence at Georgetown University on October 2 and 3. If you wish to join us, please visit www.mhs.com/eisymposium for registration details and the two day agenda.

Promoting International Intelligence at Marlowe Academy

This July MHS UK took Social Responsibility to the corporate level when they sponsored a World Awareness Day at Marlowe Academy secondary school in Kent. Staff and students at the school came up with the ambitious idea of observing World Awareness Day by displaying 33 international flags to represent each of the nations present among the school’s pupils and staff. The staff at MHS’ UK office helped to make this idea a reality by contributing the funds needed to purchase all of the flags.

The day was arranged as part of a proactive step by the school to celebrate diversity, promote the identity of its pupils and support relationships amongst its international community. Students and staff got creative, making outfits based on the traditional garb of other cultures, and dance groups from Slovakia, Africa and Poland were joined by Kenyan band Kenge Kenge to provide rhythm for the day.

The international flags were prominently displayed throughout the celebrations. One of the leaders of Kenge Kenge, Peter Orindg, said, “I was very impressed when I entered the hall and saw all the flags displayed, they must do this again”. Other highlights included a host of display stands with information about each country and the chance to try foreign foods, from pizza to vindaloo and Caribbean treats. At the end of the day pupils gathered in the grounds to arrange themselves into the shape of a globe before releasing hundreds of balloons.

School Principal, Ian Johnson said, “It was a wonderful day, a joy to see our talented students, great bands and dancers. The place was awash with enthusiasm as we all celebrated talents from around the world.” Michael Tulloch, a teacher and EQ coordinator at the school said, “our thanks go to MHS for providing the flags for the celebrations which helped the students celebrate their identities, increased the cultural awareness of others, and formed an essential part of the day. I look forward to our continued collaboration with MHS in the new school year.”

Marlowe academy is an innovative school that has turned the school’s performance around in recent years through a range of groundbreaking initiatives that have positive Emotional Intelligence practices at the core. Marlowe was one of the pilot SEAL (Social Emotional Aspects of Learning) schools and will be using the EQ-i YV to assess all of their year 7 (first year within the school) intake come September. This intake testing will help to inform Emotional Intelligence practices and to support the collective and individual needs of the students as they set out to achieve their potential at the school and in life.

What’s the Matter with Kids Today?

Gambling behavior in youth has been linked to a number of bad outcomes, including criminal behavior, poor academic achievement, school truancy, financial problems, poor social relationships, substance abuse, depression and suicide. Problem gambling is reported to occur 2-4 times more often in youth than in adults.  This is prompting teachers, parents, and youth psychologists to ask, “what’s the matter with kids today?” 

 

Could it be Emotional Intelligence, or a lack thereof?

 

A recent study conducted by Dr. James Parker and his colleagues found evidence of a relationship between youth troubles—in this case problem gambling, internet misuse, and video gaming—and Emotional Intelligence. The study involved 667 adolescents who were divided into two groups: 13-15 year olds and 16-18 year olds.

 

Study Participants completed an internet addiction questionnaire, a problem video gaming scale, a gambling questionnaire, and the youth version of the EQ-i (EQ-i YV). This battery of tests found that males generally scored higher than females in measures of problem gambling, while there was no gender difference in internet use.

 

Parker and his colleagues found a relationship among the various problem behaviors that he measured and referred to it as “dysfunctional preoccupation.” That is, gambling, excessive internet use, and gaming addiction seemed to be related and not separate issues.

 

But what about Emotional Intelligence? EI was found to be a moderate to strong predictor of these problems, with a significant negative correlation between EI and dysfunctional preoccupation. Based on path analysis, EI accounted for 58% and 31% of the variance in addiction-related behaviors for the younger and older groups, respectively.  The EI skill most indicative of problem behavior was interpersonal EI, suggesting that perhaps youth with poor social skills are more prone to addictive behaviors. Another possibility is that these addictive behaviors create a deterioration of their interpersonal skills in youth.

 

Clearly, this is an area worthy of further research.

Reference
Parker, James, Taylor, Robyn, Eastabrook, Jennifer, Schell, Stacey, & Wood, Laura. (2008). Problem gambling in adolescence: Relationships with internet misuse, gaming abuse, and Emotional Intelligence. Personality and Individual Differences, 45, 174-180.