Discovering the Emotional Intelligence exhibited by primary school teachers while delivering Physical Education in the United Kingdom

It has been stated that Emotional Intelligence (E.I) is an integral part of a teacher's skill set (Corcoran and Tormey, 2013) and consequently teachers displaying a high Emotional Quotient (E.Q) produce more enthusiastic and motivating P.E lessons (Akhmetovaa, Kima and Harnischb, 2014). Therefore, it is important to understand how to utilise certain facets of E.I while delivering primary P.E to varying age groups. Previous studies measuring teachers E.I has mainly concentrated classroom environments or measuring P.E teacher’s E.Q (Hen and Sharabi-Nov, 2014; Sutton and Wheatley, 2003; Al-Zaid and Al-Khayat, 2016; Klemola, Heikinaro-Johansson and O'Sullivan, 2013), though little research has been investigated on the emotional competencies that are displayed by teachers while delivering primary P.E. This study classified the most displayed facets of E.I by teachers while delivering primary P.E. to different key stages. The study was conducted with seventeen primary school teachers participating (7 males and 10 females). The data was collected via overt observations, self-reflective journals and semi structured interviews. The results highlighted the four most displayed facets of E.I in each key stage from a possible twenty. Interestingly, four varying facets of emotions were displayed for each of the three key stages, stating that different emotional skills are required when teaching different age groups. Furthermore, all teachers stated that working on their E.I provided a positive reflection on their own delivery in P.E. This study suggests that teaching different age groups require varied facets of emotions to deliver successful P.E lessons.