Enhancing the Incorporation of Emotional intelligence into the Teacher Education Curriculum in Zimbabwe /

Abstract

Teachers in Zimbabwe face a myriad of challenges that cause stress, burnout and loss of emotional composure and professionalism and necessitate that they be equipped with emotional intelligence skills. In addition, there is public concern over growing cases of teacher suicide (Goba, 2019; Tshili, 2020; Anonymous, 2022; Naitha, 2022) and teachers have consistently been under public criticism for alleged professional incompetence (Ncube, 2023), corruption (Moyo, 2022) and poor interpersonal relationships. These allegations and cases of teacher suicide suggest a need for Teacher Education in Zimbabwe to enhance emotional intelligence education and training. Enhanced emotional intelligence education and training would enhance teachers’ professional conduct, ability to cope with stress and relationship building skills (Vesley, Saklofske & Leschied, 2013; Mafuzah & Jais, 2015; Chen & Guo, 2018; Reddy & Bhaskara Rao, 2018; Brackett & Katulak, 2018; Soanes & Sungoh, 2019; Hen, 2020; Baba, 2020). However, there is lack of information and guidelines on how and what content to integrate to enhance the incorporation of emotional intelligence into the Teacher Education Curriculum in Zimbabwe. This study therefore, explored measures that could be adopted to enhance the incorporation of emotional intelligence into the Teacher Education Curriculum of State Universities in Zimbabwe. It adopted a multiple case study design, within the interpretivist paradigm. Data were sourced from 16 purposively drawn university teacher educators and 40 student teachers registered for the Bachelor of Education Degree. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions and documents. The revised Mayer, Caruso and Salovey Ability Model (2016) served as the theoretical basis for this study. The thematic approach was adopted for data analysis. The study found that the incorporation of emotional intelligence into the Teacher Education Curriculum of State Universities in Zimbabwe, could be enhanced through emotional intelligence capacity development for university teacher educators, through integrating explicit emotional intelligence-focused content into Teacher Education modules and by introducing a stand-alone emotional intelligence module. This study recommends that emotional intelligence capacity development workshops be conducted for university teacher educators, that explicit emotional intelligence-focused content that is informed by emotional intelligence theories, be incorporated into the Teacher Education programmes and that interactive, experiential and reflective instructional approaches be adopted in emotional intelligence education and training. The study further recommends that Teacher Education in Zimbabwe, introduces a complete stand-alone emotional intelligence module at the Master of Education Degree level.