Teaching Competency of G.C.E A/L School Teachers in Kurunegala District in relation to Emotional Intelligence

Abstract

Intellectual ability is a consequential factor in presaging teacher’s prosperity. However, recent studies have shown that a perspicacity and edifying experience is not entirely indicative of the teacher’s prosperity in edifying vocation. Rather skills and edifying competency are essential ingredients to be a professional teacher. In today’s world, the teacher must develop the essential 21st Century competencies. A teacher’s competency in the 21st century according to UNESCO (2008) is that a competent teacher should have firm erudition of the curriculum of his/her subject and to utilize technology into the curriculum. Edifying competency refers to the knowledge, attitude, skills, and self-perception or the products that emanate from mixing these comportments and resulting in the consistent pattern of demeanor leading to the procurement of expected outcomes. Edifying competency is the faculty of a teacher demonstrated through a set of overt edifier classroom deportments which is resultant of the interaction between the presage and the product variables of edifying within a gregarious setting. Besides edifying competency, temperament, leadership, and attitude are the consequential attributes which are indicative of the capabilities generally kenned as emotional intelligence are equipollently essential in the edifying-cognition process. The single most consequential factor for prosperous bellwether in the workplace is emotional intelligence. As suggested by Wright (2008), the skills, facilities, and competencies coupled with the caliber of motivation, commitment and engagement act as drivers in terms of the employees’ actions. The aim of the study was to inspect the association between teaching competency and emotional intelligence of G.C.E. A/L school teachers. Quantitative methodology is applied in this study. This study utilized a descriptive correlational analysis to examine the relationship between teaching competency and emotional intelligence of G.C.E. A/L School edifiers. In this research General Teaching Competency Scale (Passi, Lalita, 2011) and Emotional Intelligence Scale (Ayde, Pethe & Dhar,2002) were validated and used along with the mean, standard-deviation, t-test and Pearson's product moment correlation for statistical analysis. Adopting the non-probability sampling technique, a sample of 100 teachers from government and private schools of Kurunegala District was culled for the purpose of the present investigation and questionnaires are used as data collection method. The findings of the study revealed that there is no significant difference in the teaching competency and emotional intelligence of teachers teaching in government and private schools and indicating that the type of school does not play a defining role towards their job. Also, it has been evident that there is no gender influence on the teaching competency and emotional intelligence of school teachers. The value of the coefficient of correlation (r) came out to be 0.885 which is significant at 0.01 level of confidence, indicating that there is a positive correlation between teaching competency and emotional intelligence of secondary school teachers. In conclusion, prosperity of teachers should be contingent with their emotional intelligence and teaching competency. Emotional intelligence has been a paramount factor in edifying cognition process which demands to teach competency on the component of the edifier. Seminars, workshops, and conferences should be organized in which edifiers should be invited to refresh their erudition and discuss their quandaries which they face in their work environment. It would be a better conception if inhibited workload according to the capacity of the edifiers is given to them.