Explicit Development of Emotional Intelligence Skills to Improve Special Education Teacher Leadership

As a general construct, emotional intelligence encompasses emotional, personal, and social abilities influential upon one’s overall capability to effectively deal with environmental demands and pressures (McCallum & Piper, 2000). Emotional intelligence was further defined by Schutte, Malouff, Bobik, Coston, Greeson, & Jedlicka (2001) as the ability to adaptively recognize, express, regulate, and harness emotions. Diverse cognitive or emotional intelligence skills vary by age, gender, and developmental level (Gardner, 1995), which thereby impacts one’s level of competency or FLOW (Csikszentmihaly, 2013).

Accountability of teacher preparation and graduate leadership programs remain an ongoing process. Both the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation (CAEP, 2019) and the Association for Advancing Quality in Educator Preparation (AAQEP, 2022) provide standards that expect teacher preparation and graduate leadership program curriculum to address leadership skill development. Emotional intelligence has been linked to effective leadership (Goleman, 2002, 2008b). Unfortunately, within too many accredited programs, emotional intelligence behaviors are implicitly presented rather than explicitly taught and thereby reliably assessed. However, a study by Anderson (2017) indicated a direct correlation between a leader’s demonstrated emotional intelligence behaviors in the workplace and stakeholders’ perceptions of optimal school climate,

Outcomes of Anderson’s (2017) research noted it is not yet known if and to what degree public schools that are led by leaders exhibiting high emotional intelligence (EQ) would have teachers exhibiting high EQ.  Furthermore, would such schools be more likely to then be perceived as intentionally inviting, having students with higher socio-emotional skills, or have comparatively more diverse learners receiving education in an inclusive setting?  These questions invite further research on the impact of typically demonstrated emotional intelligence and effective teacher leadership within special education settings.

 A study by Byron (2001) found institutes of higher education (IHE) that focus upon emotional intelligence behaviors produced successful outcomes. However, Cobb and Meyer (2000) cautioned that any program seeking to develop emotional intelligence skills “should be empirically defensible, measurable, and clear enough to serve as a basis for curriculum development" (18).  For instance, Sanders’ (2010) quantitative study examined the perceptions of professors that focus upon educational leadership in their work within IHE. Specifically, Sanders sought to identify the professors’ understanding of competencies related to emotional intelligence and the extent to which these competencies were being included within their IHE teacher leadership programs. Left unanswered was whether or to what extent the teacher leaders’ demonstrated emotional intelligence related to stakeholders’ perceptions of optimal school climate

Given teaching is considered one of the most stressful occupations (Palomera, Fernandez-Berrocal, & Brackett, 2008), increasing the importance of emotional intelligence skills training is crucial because professional development in emotional intelligence skills can support teachers’ coping skills within a stressful environment. Teacher burnout becomes more predictable in relation to stress. By contrast, teachers exhibiting high emotional intelligence use more positive, well-adapted, coping strategies to deal with different sources of stress at school, thereby feeling greater job satisfaction (Palomera et al., 2008).

Teacher leadership can be present in different forms for varied purposes, including management, instruction, and school reform. Teacher leadership may be structured either formally or informally as it evolves through presented opportunities and explicit needs within schools. Leadership advancing Invitational Education (IE) theory encourages people to tap into their unlimited potential (Purkey & Novak, 2016). Based on her meta-analysis, Billingsley (2007) found support in the literature for the expectation that serving the needs of students with disabilities requires multiple layers of leadership across school-wide and district-wide levels. Therefore, it makes sense that an intentionally inviting leader’s increased ability to effectively interact with diverse stakeholders would mitigate barriers that confront teacher leaders and their ability to support diverse learners.

To leverage the social, structural, and fiscal, resources beneficial for students with disabilities York-Barr, Sommerness, Duke, and Ghere (2005) suggested teacher leaders should provide the vision, direction, and plans for special education and encouraged prospective teacher leaders to collaborate and advocate across multiple levels within their educational systems.  As a result, prospective teacher leaders would learn to project a concrete understanding of the correlation between the degree to which they are connected to stakeholders within the school and the degree to which they can influence diverse learners’ ability to be connected, feel supported, and optimally succeed within the culture of that school.

Through their educator and leadership preparation programs, every IHE can benefit from encouraging teaching practices that require increased competence in emotional awareness as well as cognition. The results of a study by Rojas (2012) asserted three needs for optimal emotional intelligence development among prospective teachers:

1.  Development of emotional intelligence begins with a commitment to change.
2. Application of emotional intelligence learning is optimized within environments favorable to emotional intelligence development.
3. Pursuit of an ideal allows interdependent application of all other emotional intelligence competencies.

Within the context of emotional intelligence, at least two perspectives are possible: maximal emotional intelligence performance and typical emotional intelligence performance (Gignac, 2010). Typical performance is a more reliable indicator of actual behavior (Sackett, Zadeck & Fogli, 1988). Gignac (2010) and Palmer, Stough, Harmer & Gignac (2009) suggest typical emotional intelligence is purely relevant to the actual demonstration of emotional intelligence skills. Therefore, typical emotional intelligence performance perspective grounds the Genos Emotional Intelligence inventories (Palmer et al., 2009).

Five factors that can be influenced by every leader’s demonstrated emotional intelligence provide a specific framework that contributes to school success or failure. The five powerful factors: People, places, policies, programs, and processes (the Five P’s) become highly significant due to their separate and combined influence (Purkey & Siegel, 2013). Interdependently, the Five P’s provide limitless opportunities for evaluation and development of organizational climate. Grounded in Invitational Education theory, the Five P’s “address the total culture or ecosystem of almost any organization” (Purkey & Siegel, 2003, p. 104). Therefore, the Five P’s contribute to the creation of a positive school climate and ultimately a healthy and successful organization (Purkey & Siegel, 2013).

As noted above, various elements produce an effective educational leader. Clearly, emotional intelligence competencies have been correlated with leadership potential (Charbonneau & Nicol, 2002; Dries & Pepermans, 2007). Yet, further examination of the relationship between emotional intelligence and effective educational leadership remains an ongoing need. Increased understanding of emotional intelligence as a concept and development of participants' emotional intelligence will further enhance any IHE’s leadership development programs (Sadri, 2012).

The field of education would benefit from further understanding the correlation between themes such as emotional intelligence, perception of school climate, and effective leadership capable of monitoring and adjusting indicators of success that optimize and sustain educational reform. The awareness and management of emotions, as well as perception of emotions by others, provide critical elements for success as a leader (Cherniss, 2010). Ideally, this article positively influenced your acceptance that our constantly and rapidly evolving society, will benefit from resilient leaders that possess and demonstrate high levels of emotional intelligence.  Therefore, you are intentionally invited to become an advocate for explicit development of emotional development skills as part of every IHE’s teacher preparation and graduate leadership programs.

 

 

To Cite:

Anderson, C. J. (July 30, 2022). Explicit development of emotional intelligence skills to improve special education teacher leadership. [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

 

References

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Billingsley, B. S. (2007). Recognizing and supporting the critical roles of teachers in special

            education leadership. Exceptionality, 15(3), 163-176. doi:10.1080/09362830701503503

 

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Special Education Leadership and the Pursuit of Ethical Practice

            Special educators who serve students in inclusive educational settings as well as those serving students with severe disabilities are more likely to experience complex and fragmented work lives.  While special education has become a major concern for school leaders, too few studies have addressed the supervisory practices or the contributions and roles for teacher leadership in special education (York-Barr, Sommerness, Duke & Ghere., 2005; Bays and Crockett,2007; Billingsley, 2007; Bagley & Tang, 2018).  This lack of knowledge related to effective supervision and promotion of teacher leaders may be a contributing factor to why special educators are more likely to depart the educational profession (Ingersoll, 2001) or why students with special needs do not always receive optimal FAPE.

Bays and Crockett (2007) found principals attempting to balance management, administrative, and supervisory duties; monitoring legal compliance; and ensuring instructional quality exhibited minimal level of interactions with teachers regarding the improvement of teaching and learning for students with special needs.  Desiring to contribute knowledge and strategies that would result in improved support of special educators seeking inclusive, high quality educational experiences for students with disabilities, York-Barr et al’s well-grounded qualitative research (2005) aligned with and extended previous findings by the Council for Exceptional Children (2001) and yielded eight major findings organized into three clusters:

·         the nature of the work of special educators,

·         special educators demonstrating leadership functions, and

·         differentiated support realized from others. 

Finding few references to the leadership roles of special educators, Billingsley (2007) explored potential contributions of teacher leadership for special education by reviewing select teacher literature from general education-- including the “emergence of new teacher roles in schools, the roots and meanings of teacher leadership, and potential benefits of teacher leadership” (p. 164).  Conducting a meta-analysis of nearly 50 articles and studies was conducted in addition to a case-study interview with a special education teacher who possessed nearly thirty- years of experience during which time she reviewed the professional literature to develop the Supports with Imagination and Meaning (SWIM) program, Billingsley (2007) selected and reviewed teacher leadership literature in general education, including the emergence of new teacher roles in schools, roots and meanings of teacher leadership, and possible benefits of teachers as leaders.  After reviewing several examples of teacher leadership in special education, Billingsley investigated barriers to teacher leadership and ways of supporting the work of teacher leaders.  As a result, Billingsley found support in the literature for the belief that serving the needs of students with disabilities requires multiple leaders across school-wide and district-wide levels.  Teacher leadership can be present in different forms for varied purposes, including management, instruction, and school reform.  Therefore, teacher leadership may be structured either formally or informally as it evolves through presented opportunities and explicit needs within schools.

Whenever teachers are provided on-going opportunities to learn through experiences, experiment with new ideas, and then creatively implement new programs then they are more likely to become teacher leaders in both their schools and communities.  These opportunities are beneficial by allowing prospective teacher leaders to develop broader perspectives related to the identified needs within schools and across the district.  This encourages reflection about their own practices and provides variety in their work and recognition of their expertise.  Therefore, these new roles and opportunities to influence others serve as critical forms of renewal for special educators.

Special educators become leaders by adeptly confronting barriers to the education of students who have disabilities, rather than accepting the norms and values of the status quo (Billingsley, 2007, p. 166).  Through focus group interviews with special educators selected based on documented effectiveness serving students with low-incidence disabilities York-Barr et al. (2005) found it is better to “understand their realities of practice in inclusive education and to identify supports for such practice” (p. 193). Although York-Barr et al did not specifically focus upon teacher leadership, they did discuss how special educators served as “informal leaders” (p. 200) by articulating “a sophisticated understanding of how their schools and districts functioned organizationally and politically” (p. 193). They also suggested that teacher leaders provided the vision, direction, and plans for special education and encouraged prospective teacher leaders to collaborate and advocate across multiple levels within their educational systems, thereby leveraging the social, structural and fiscal resources beneficial for students with disabilities.  In doing so, prospective teacher leaders project a concrete understanding that the degree to which they are connected in a school influences the degree to which students with disabilities are connected, supported, and provided opportunities for success within the culture of the school (p. 211).

Analyzed research, drawn conclusions, and provided implications for future practice or research by York-Barr, et al, (2005); Bays and Crockett (2007); as well as Billingsley (2007) were each grounded within the conceptual framework of special education leadership and the ethical treatment of students with special needs.  While each study’s limited sample certainly restricts the ability to generalize results, the shared references amongst and between the collective researchers served to narrow the focus of each study while expanding the implications of individual results to the field of special education and educational leadership. Clearly further research on teacher leadership in special education is required to promote the opportunities for teacher leaders in schools and optimize student learning in the least restrictive environment. Possible research questions suggested by Billingsley include:

•          What is the nature of teacher leaders’ roles at the school (e.g., elementary, secondary) and district levels?
•          What factors (e.g., personal, organizational, preparation) influence the exercise of special education leadership by both special and general educators?

o   How does the culture of the district and school influence teacher leaders’ work?

o   How do special education leaders learn to work within the social organization of their schools?” (173)

        Additionally, related to previous research by Anderson (2017), it is not yet known if and to what degree elementary schools that are led by leaders exhibiting high emotional intelligence (EQ) would have teachers exhibiting high EQ.  Are such schools more likely to have students receiving education in an inclusive setting?  These are all crucial questions that beg for further research on effective teacher leadership in special education.            

To Cite:

Anderson, C.J. (November 30, 2020). Special education leadership and the pursuit of ethical

practice. [Web log post] Retrieved from http://www.ucan-cja.blogspot.com/

 

References

Anderson, C. J. (2017). Examining demonstrated emotional intelligence and

perceptions of inviting schools. Journal of Invitational Theory and Practice,

23, 35-61. 

Bagley, S. & Tang, K. (2018) Teacher leadership in special education: Exploring skills, roles,

and perceptions. Journal of Interdisciplinary Teacher Leadership (JoITL) 2  (1) Dec

 

Bays, D. A., & Crockett, J. B. (2007). Investigating instructional leadership for special

            education. Exceptionality, 15(3), 143-161. doi:10.1080/09362830701503495

 

Billingsley, B. S. (2007). Recognizing and supporting the critical roles of teachers in special

            education leadership. Exceptionality, 15(3), 163-176. doi:10.1080/09362830701503503

Crockett, J. B. (2007). INTRODUCTION: The Changing Landscape of Special Education 

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York-Barr, J., Sommerness, J., Duke, K., & Ghere, G. (2005). Special educators in inclusive

            education programmes: reframing their work as teacher leadership. International Journal

            of Inclusive Education, 9(2), 193-215. doi:10.1080/1360311042000339374