Qualities of Teacher Effectiveness in Delivering School-Based Mental Health Programs: The Relevance of Emotional Intelligence

The promotion of school-based mental health is essential to the emotional and behavioral well-being of students, and student well-being has been strongly linked to academic success and has now become a significant focus of the current research movement in education. This chapter draws on the evidence of emotional intelligence (EI) programs that have been shown to be an effective method of building psychological strength and the capacity for teachers to effectively meet the demands of the classroom. The focus of developing EI is to promote the skills needed by teachers to both prevent and manage stressful issues as they arise. EI is viewed as a practical and “well-packaged” way of dealing with stress by providing teachers with the personal tools required to support themselves in a career that is characterized with high emotional effort.