Investigation of Emotional Intelligence Levels of Multilingual, Bilingual and Monolingual Teachers

Abstract

Due to reasons such as migration, economy, and politics, people have sometimes interacted with more than one language. This situation has also given rise to multilingualism. Multilingualism is a situation that involves being competent in more than one language. Emotional intelligence forms the basis of knowing oneself and being able to control one’s emotions effectively. The research aims to examine the emotional intelligence levels of teachers who know more than one language and teachers who know only one language. For this purpose, a case study, one of the qualitative research designs, was used. To collect the data, a semi-structured interview form prepared by the researchers to obtain expert opinions was applied to the teachers in the study group. The obtained data was analyzed using content analysis and the levels of self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy, and social skills in the teachers were revealed. While the levels in question were revealed, the teachers’ definitions of their emotional intelligence competencies and their comments about their levels were included through direct quotations. These levels were graded as bad/not sufficient, normal/sufficient, above normal, and high/good according to the teachers’ answers. According to the research results, although there are some differences according to the competence areas of emotional intelligence, it was concluded that being multilingual does not have any negative effect on emotional intelligence. In addition, it was seen that the emotional intelligence levels of trilingual and quadrilingual teachers were much better based on their responses to the survey questions and their interpretations of their levels. The research results were compared with similar studies and various suggestions were made.