Research on emotional intelligence among Indian teachers: A Systematic Review and meta-analysis of its correlation with health parameters and impact of gender

Abstract

Background Emotional intelligence is the self-perception related to identification and regulation of emotions. Several studies have been done among Indian teachers evaluating emotional intelligence in relation to demographic, professional and various psychological parameters, but the variety of scales, teacher types, and conflicting results makes it difficult to draw any meaningful conclusions from this heterogeneous data. The present work aims to synthesize the available data by both qualitative and quantitative analysis and is the first such attempt to include only Indian studies in this field. The main objectives were to determine the correlation of emotional intelligence with teachers’ health parameters and to study the gender difference in emotional intelligence. Methods After a thorough literature search in Google, Google scholar, Scopus, Web of science and Pubmed, fifty-five Indian studies were selected which empirically examined teachers’ emotional intelligence, either alone or in association with another parameter evaluating teachers’ psychological health and performance. After qualitative assessment of major findings, quantitative analysis was performed. Three separate meta-analysis were carried out. The first one with fifteen effect sizes among 3291 participants evaluated correlation with personal health parameters. The second with nineteen effect sizes in 4165 participants evaluated correlation with professional health parameters. The third with twenty-six studies involving 6005 participants assessed effect of gender. Results The results show that almost all studies have used a trait measure, teachers’ emotional intelligence is positively correlated with both personal and professional health parameters and gender has no effect on emotional intelligence. Conclusion Major limitations are a very high degree of heterogeneity of the data, incomplete description of the scales, inadequate randomization and small sample sizes in many studies. The results indicate the importance of emotional intelligence in both personal and professional life of teachers and no effect of gender preparing a solid base for future research.