Emotional Intelligence
by Natalie Jansorn (602 Spring 1998)
 

The obvious fact is that our social life has undergone a thorough and radical change.  If our education is to have any meaning for life, it must pass through an equally complete transformation  (Dewey, 1915).

 Enter for a moment the middle school in which I have been working throughout the past year.  In the principal’s office, sits Jerome, his eye swelling to a puffy, deep purple slit.  When asked why he was fighting, Jerome bursts out a string of profanities mixed with his rationale that that boy “dissed” him.  This was Jerome’s third fight in four months.  If we go to the cafeteria, we will meet Krissy sitting alone amongst the three hundred students crammed in for lunch.  Krissy has no friends nor even any peers willing to be her acquaintance.  Krissy’s behaviors change with the wind, from bossing around her peers to talking like a toddler to slamming her books to hugging anyone who show kindness.  Social skills are not Krissy’s forte.  Along with Jerome and Krissy, are other sixth-graders who wander through school in a daze of apathy, who bounce off walls at the slightest inclination, who chastise their peers for perceived glares, or who throw their hands up in defeat at the first sign of frustration.  Their grades are depressing representations of how little academics they have learned.  Most do not see any point in school and will most likely drop out as soon as possible.

 If you think for a minute that this is one school’s problems, take a look at these statistics:

In 1990, compared to the previous two decades, the United States saw the highest juvenile arrest rate for violent crimes ever; teen arrests for forcible rape had doubled; teen murder rates quadrupled, mostly due to an increase in shootings.  During those same two decades, the suicide rate for teenagers tripled...  (Goleman, 1995, p. 231).
In addition, for girls, teenage pregnancy, eating disorders, and depression are rampant.  Just hearing such tales and statistics depresses you- can you imagine living them?

 Are we in a state of disrepair?  what can we do to eradicate such gruesome realities so that these children will have a chance to thrive?  The first question an instructional systems designer must ask herself is:  is this a problem that can be remedied through instruction and training?  As overwhelming as it may appear, I am convinced this can be remedied, one step at a time, through an intervention called social and emotional learning.

Emotional Intelligence Defined

 In 1995, Daniel Goleman published his controversial book Emotional Intelligence which brought to the fore the question of what it takes to be successful in life.  General intelligence, or IQ, has long been used to predict one’s academic success and occupational achievement.  However, Goleman contends that IQ contributes only 20 percent to the factors that determine life success  (O’Neill, 1996).  That means there is another 80 percent that we have yet to focus on sufficiently- of which emotional intelligence is a part.

 Within the past decade or so, researchers have begun to bring social and emotional intelligences to the center of attention.  Emotional intelligence is defined as “the subset of social intelligence that involves the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate amount them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions”  (Salovey and Mayer, 1990).  Social intelligence was first classified by Thorndike in 1920, but has been less studied than general intelligence because it is harder to distinguish theoretically and empirically  (Mayer and Geher, 1996).  According to Goleman, emotional intelligence includes five main components:  self-awareness, impulse control, persistence and motivation, empathy, and social deftness.  Most closely related to emotional intelligence is Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, in particular interpersonal and intrapersonal intelligences, the ability to understand others and oneself respectively.  The main distinction between Gardner’s theory and emotional intelligence is that Gardner focuses on the cognitions about feelings rather than the role of feelings in intelligence  (Goleman, p. 40).

 When discussion focuses around feelings, many of us think immediately of “soft,” “touchy-feely,” “feminine,” and “New Age.”  Goleman counters these biases by grounding his work in legitimate brain and psychological research that provide empirical affirmation of the interaction between emotions and rational thought.  In particular, are neuroscientific findings that increase our understanding of the brain’s architecture including two small almond-shaped portions of the brain called the amygdalas which control our emotions.  The amygdala, in essence, is the emotional mind which is separate from the mind that thinks.  Test anxiety best exemplifies how the emotional mind can overwhelm rational thought- “your emotions got in the way.”  However, Goleman also identifies the powerful dependency rational thought has on the emotional mind.  Goleman relates the interaction between the “two minds” in a story about a man who had part of his brain removed, amygdala included.  After his surgery, the man could not make a simple “rational” decision such as setting an appointment, though his IQ remained unchanged.  Therefore, our traditional beliefs that rational thought is free of emotional attributes must be discarded.

 The concept of two minds reminds me of the two years I spent in Thailand teaching middle school.  In Thai culture, a Buddhist nation, the “head” or rational intelligence plays second to the “heart” or emotional intelligence.  Emphasis is place on the ability to control one’s emotions, to empathize with others, to persevere despite the bleakest circumstances, and to be mindful of one’s consciousness.  Emphasis on emotional intelligence is not in contradiction to rational intelligence, but is valued just as highly in order to “succeed”- especially in rural communities.

 If, as Goleman describes, we have two interdependent minds- one of emotions and one of thought- then why should curriculums focus solely on rational intelligence?  Considering the distressing state of adolescent life, it is time to design structured curriculum that give credence to the whole child, including the 80 percent not discerned by IQ tests.

The ADDIE Model:  Analysis

To refuse to try, to stick blindly to tradition, because the search for the truth involves experimentation in the region of the unknown, is to refuse the only step which can introduce conviction into education  (Dewey, 1915).

 When we think of a “special” curriculum beyond the core academics, we immediately assume a “special” target population- the delinquents, the at-risk students, the inner-city students, the low achievers.  Those are the students with the problems, right?  Well, let me enlighten you with a portrait of my high school in a quiet middle-class suburb which I attended not so long ago.

 Only fifty-five percent of the students went on to higher education, including two-year colleges and vocational training.  Most students felt little motivation to continue schooling and did not desire persisting through more tests and quizzes.  Cocaine was the drug of choice, though acid and marijuana were quite popular, too.  A male student from the general academic track was arrested for dealing kilos of cocaine to an undercover officer.  During half-time of a rival football game, a group of males beat unconscious a student from the opposing school because he refused to admit our team was better.  Finally, teen pregnancy rates were so high that it was not uncommon to meet a girl who had been pregnant more than once before she graduated.  These were white middle-class students in a suburban town.  We would have benefited tremendously from some attention to our social and emotional learning (SEL).

 Goleman stresses that emotional intelligence should not be “ghettoized” and limited to a narrow segment of our population.  The components of emotional intelligence contain skills that everyone needs to develop to be successful.  The entire school population should be targeted starting as early as possible.  Goleman cites research that promotes beginning social and emotional learning as early as the first few years of life- i.e. nurturing and guidance given by the caretaker.  There is ample evidence that first- and second-grade children exhibit behaviors symptomatic of future violence, criminality, or disengagement from school.  If we were to focus on school-age children, SEL should target all students from grades kindergarten through twelfth.

 According to Goleman, the goal of increased emotional intelligence is inoculation not crisis intervention.  Goleman likens the recent “war” on drugs campaign and other “war” campaigns to “crisis intervention, the equivalent of solving a problem by sending an ambulance to the rescue rather than giving an inoculation that would ward off the disease in the first place”  (p. 256).  The rationale is that students will receive information and training to make them socially and emotionally competent enough not to need crisis intervention for a specific problem.  This may scream idealism, but it makes sense to build a solid foundation from the inception.

 As for more tangible goals, W. T. Grant Consortium offers a list of key ingredients of effective SEL programs that reads like a grocery list of objectives.  Three domains listed are emotional, cognitive, and behavioral.  Under the emotional skills domain, the objectives include:  identifying and labeling feelings; assessing the intensity of feeling; delaying gratification; controlling impulses; and knowing the difference between feelings and actions.  The cognitive skills domain includes:  reading and interpreting social cues; using steps for problem-solving and decision-making; and self-awareness.  For behavioral skills there are two broad objectives, nonverbal and verbal, which allow for a variety of more specific objectives to be developed.  W.T. Grant’s list expands on Goleman’s five components, but should not be misinterpreted as an all-inclusive list of objectives  (Goleman, p. 301).  A general list such as this is a helpful design tool, but to develop an effective program objectives and goals would have to be tailored to the specific site.

 The main concern I have with social and emotional learning is the question of SME’s (subject matter experts).  If we are talking about basketball, then our SME’s would be people possessing talent in basketball.  However, if we are talking about social and emotional competence, then would our qualifications for SME’s be that they posses high emotional intelligence?  How would we assess their qualifications?  Would we be in danger of discriminating because of arbitrary moral standards?  Or, would we identify SME’s based on one set of objectives, i.e. she exhibits good problem-solving skills, and fail to consider a lack in other objectives, i.e. she lacks the ability to identify others’ feelings?

 The question of who is a SME is critical in that it will make or break the future of social and emotional learning curriculums.  Goleman does an excellent job of legitimizing emotional intelligence by grounding it in sound scientific research.  Nonetheless, this nascent movement would be squashed by well-intentioned liberals, New Age conformists, or right-wing Book of Virtues conservatives who, despite their good intentions, may have no understanding of current research, developmental psychology, teaching methodologies, or interpersonal skills.  I am not saying that a SME needs her Ph.D., but there must be some standard qualifications that distinguish a legitimate SME from the dime-a-dozen charlatan.  Reviewing Goleman’s work and considering several existent programs, I have yet to fill this void with standard qualifications promoted by emotional intelligence proponents.

Design and Implementation

 Once we have analyzed our target population, selected qualified SME’s, and convinced a school to expand its mandate to include SEL, we are ready to design our curriculum.

 A separate social and emotional learning class is one of three main options for a school curriculum.  Often titled life skills or social competence, the course content would focus entirely on SEL, either structured in a theme approach or a problem approach.  Themes could include health, culture, or interpersonal relationships.  A problem approach could have a structured curriculum dealing with conflict-resolution, drop-out, drugs and alcohol, or have a more flexible curriculum where students’ problems or concerns determine the class lessons.

 One such program, Responding in Peaceful and Positive Ways (RIPP), is working to reduce violence by promoting personal responsibility and respect in nine middle schools in Richmond, Virginia.  The 25-session RIPP curriculum develops critical thinking skills in students, engages them in games and real-life activities, and facilitates class discussions that empower students to speak their minds peacefully  (Meyer and Northrop, 1997).  Role plays, lots of movement, and having fun help to break down students’ “street smart” reserve and keeps them engaged in the sessions.  According to Meyer and Northrop, the program has shown promising, statistically significant differences between students who participated in RIPP and those who did not.  Continuous critical assessment has enabled the program developers to redesign the course as necessary to increase its effectiveness.

 Meyer and Northrop fail to enlighten us as to who the course instructors are and where this fits into students’ daily school schedules; both issues of grave concern for development.  To be effective, the course needs to earn the respect of students, but, and just as critically, it needs to earn the respect of the school staff.  If an outside instructor is brought in, the staff needs to understand this person’s position, believe in his/ her credibility as well as that of the course, and support this course as an integral part of the overall school curriculum.  Otherwise, even the best designed course will drown in teacher pessimism.

 A second SEL curriculum design is a holistic approach infusing SEL into core curriculums such as social studies, reading, and math.  Since emotional learning does not happen in isolation, but, rather, within some context, this design makes sense theoretically.  An integrated, broad-based approach appears to reduce children’s risk of developing problems in adolescence  (Cummings and Haggerty, 1997).  Having the SEL concepts repeated in various forms in various contexts must contribute to its effectiveness.  In this design, a school may choose to have monthly themes such as listening, friendship, etc.  In reading class, students might read a story and discuss how a main character makes a good friend because she/ he possesses certain characteristics.  Science class may be doing experiments where working with a partner is essential- how will listening to each other help facilitate the experiment?

 The Raising Healthy Children project demonstrates the realities of integrating SEL into the classroom environment  (Cummings and Haggerty, 1997).  The Raising Healthy Children project began in 1993, with 1,040 first- and second-grade students in Washington State.  The program based its belief on the premise that single-focused skills training programs are not enough  (p. 28).  Teachers helped select the social and emotional skills they felt the school should target, including listening, problem-solving, anger management, and recognizing feelings.  Then, the project designers “developed units to help teachers with direct instruction, practice, reinforcement, and generalization of skills and presented them at staff development workshops”  (p. 29).  Cooperative learning, teacher modeling, lots of opportunities to practice and to reflect, and ample feedback and reinforcement enhance the implementation of this SEL curriculum.

 Myriad pro’s and con’s can be debated about this broad-based SEL infusion curriculum.  Raising Healthy Children does not mention how to win teachers over at a time when so many are screaming, “back to basics.”  Cummings and Haggerty discuss staff development and the necessity that teachers afford SEL the same intensive attention they give to their core subjects.  Nonetheless, the question remains of overcrowded schedules and maxed-out teachers.  Staff development does not expand the allotted instruction time nor relieve teachers of anxiety about higher test scores and GPAs for their students.  It seems that this model would fit most easily into elementary school curriculums that are already more flexible with their curriculums.  For secondary school curriculums, the SEL component must be clearly in tune with the school population and must be planned intensively to mesh with the core curriculum as logically as possible to enable clear connections to be made.  The easier the implementation, the less stress it will create for teachers which, in return, will better ensure a consistent, structured, and meaningful learning experience for students.

 Finally, the third SEL curriculum design integrates the two prior models into a comprehensive K-12 social and emotional development curriculum.  Through this approach, students would engage in a blended SEL-core subject curriculum for most years, and participate in a separate SEL course for at least one year, probably at the secondary school level.  In this sense, a core foundation would be established, built upon, and then intensified.

 The school district of New Haven, Connecticut, home of Yale University and a host of the most dismal inner-city dilemmas, employs such an integrated program in its Social Development Project.  As Goleman describes, New Haven “has sunk into a pit of poverty, drugs, and violence” and “has the highest proportion of women with AIDS in the United States”  (p. 270).  The school district could no longer focus solely on teaching academic skills when so many of its students wanted to learn how to stay alive.

 A district task force- including educators, parents, students, community leaders, university researchers, and human service providers- first assessed the needs of their target population.  Next, they set their goals:

... to educate knowledgeable, responsible, and caring students who acquired a set of basic skills, values, and work habits for a lifetime of meaningful work and constructive citizenship... helping students develop positive self-concepts and helping them learn to live safe, legal, and healthy lives  (Weissburg, et al, 1997, p. 38).

The designed curriculum includes 25-50 instruction hours per grade centering on the emotional intelligence components such as problem-solving, communication, self-awareness, impulse control, and empathy.  In the primary grades these components are blended into the core curriculum.  In other grades, life skills is taught as a separate topic.  For the entire K-12 program, curriculum committees set sequence, develop objectives, and adapt materials from other programs to fit their needs.  Furthermore, the district in collaboration with university researchers has designed monitoring and evaluation strategies to develop the program’s effectiveness.

 The New Haven model, obviously the most intensive structure, takes a proactive approach to inoculate its students against future problems.  This design emphasizes that social and emotional learning are imperative to achieving not only academic success but success in life as well.  Most importantly, this design could be implemented to some intensity in any school district; its not an inner-city school design only.  The fact that this district adapted other programs’ materials leads me to believe that a prototypical model could be designed based on the emotional intelligence components so long as it provides flexibility for site-based adaptations.

 A prototypical design would be optimal if it runs through a K-12 curriculum, is developmentally-appropriate, and provides enough structure and sequence to maintain teacher stress to a minimal degree.  The design must integrate monitoring and assessment strategies throughout.  What these evaluation methods should be is a complicated issue in and of itself.

Evaluation

 One of the reasons designers have shied away from affective education programs is that assessment methods have been inadequate.  Even the most well-intentioned, intuitively-sound program needs to produce statistically significant results in order to continue receiving support.

 SEL programs state goals of long-term behavior changes, positive life outcomes, and future academic success.  Commendable goals, but financial investors do not want to wait 10-20 years to find out if their investment was worth it or not.  Furthermore, teachers who are expending great effort to implement SEL programs risk rapid burnout if no fruits are quickly produced from their labor.  Behavior changes are slow, I agree.  Sustained investment is essential, I agree.  However, when researchers expect program stakeholders to wait 7-10 years for results  (Elias, 1997), they are setting themselves up for dismissal.  Longitudinal studies need to be supplemented with formative assessments of tangible enabling objectives.

 Most programs reviewed noted comparison studies between program and non-program students as their form of assessment.  Comparisons were based on independent observations and teacher and student reports.  Case studies, anecdotes, surveys, and interviews provide one level of assessment to determine qualitative changes.  Considering that we are dealing with the affective domain, one would think that qualitative analysis should suffice.  Yet considering the movement of education toward increasing emphasis on testing, competencies, and better numbers (higher GPAs, lower school suspensions), an SEL program designer would be wise to develop reliable quantitative assessments.
 
As developmental psychologists and others increase their understanding of emotional intelligence, quantitative assessments will become more available.  Psychologists are developing EQ tests to assess emotional intelligence much like the standard IQ tests for general intelligence.  Would giving people an emotional intelligence score be the answer to this assessment dilemma?

 Perhaps more creative assessments would be more valuable.  Student portfolios, daily journals, video documentaries, or (for the traditional at heart) objective tests based on the course content.  In my opinion, testing a student’s knowledge of information does not indicate she knows how to apply that knowledge.  Assessments should evidence that students can, in fact, resolve a conflict not just verbalize conflict resolution steps.  The issue of appropriate evaluation strategies is one that I and other designers need to explore further.
 

Conclusion

“You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.”
The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Emotional intelligence is not a fad.  In a sense, it is a return to values that were once instilled inherently by families.  Why should emotional intelligence be consciously integrated into school curriculum design?  Because for many children and adolescents today, school is the one institution they can depend on.  Whether schools like it or not, they have the responsibility to help students develop into competent, caring, and successful members of our community.  Schools can no longer be praised for teaching the 3R’s, if they are not attending to the social and emotional needs which are stifling our development.

The impact this has for instructional systems design is that credibility must be given to affective education.  University teacher preparation programs are doing a disservice to their students if they are not awakening students to what it means to be an educator today.  Universities need to train teachers-to-be in methodologies that incorporate social and emotional intelligence.  By ignoring this duty, universities are digging the moat between teaching in theory and teaching in reality.  Then we wonder why so many new teachers leave teaching within five years claiming that it wasn’t what they expected it to be.
 
Goleman and other promoters of emotional intelligence are making those expectations clear.  It is time we listen and design programs accordingly.

 References
 

Cummings, C., & Haggerty, K.P.  (1997).  Raising Healthy Children.  Educational Leadership,  54 (8), 28-30.

Dewey, J.  (1915 revised edition).  The school and society.  Chicago:  The University of Chicago  Press c. 1990.

Elias, M.J., Bruene-Butler, L., Blum, L., & Schuyler, T.  (1997).  How to launch a social and  emotional learning program.  Educational Leadership, 54(8), 15-19.

Goleman, D.  (1995).  Emotional Intelligence.  New York:  Bantam Books.

Mayer, J.D., & Gehrer, G.  (1996).  Emotional intelligence and the identification of emotion.   Intelligence, 22, 89-113.

Meyer, A.L., & Northrop, W.B.  (1997).  What is violence prevention, anyway?  Educational  Leadership, 54(8), 31-33.

O’Neill, J.  (1996).  On emotional intelligence: A conversation with Daniel Goleman.   Educational Leadership, 54(1), from website:  Home.Publications.Educational  Leadership.September 96.

Salovey, P., & Mayer, J.D.  (1990).  Emotional Intelligence.  Imagination, Cognition, and  Personality, 9(3), 185-211.

Weissburg, R.P., Shriver, T.P., Bose, S., & DeFalco, K.  (1997).  Creating a districtwide social  development project.  Educational Leadership, 54(8), 37-39.