Mediating Role of Emotional Intelligence in the Interrelationship of Elementary School Teachers’ Social Skills and Social Competence

Teachers’ emotional intelligence is one of the prime indicators of their improved social skill and social competence at workplace. Due to rapid changes in the current times, the role of school teachers has become very challenging. Different factors affect their teaching effectiveness. Emotional intelligence is one such important factor which has been less explored in the context of elementary education. The present study examines how emotional intelligence mediates the relations of social skills and social competence of teachers. A total of 210 teachers participated in the study from elementary schools of Punjab, Pakistan. A quantitative measure was administered to collect data on five-point Likert type scale. Mean score Pearson’s r, regression and path analysis were conducted to analyze the data. The results showed a high mean score which was above 4.00 for teachers’ emotional intelligence, social skills and social competence. The correlation between all the three variables indicated social skills having significant correlation with social competence (r value=.766 and p< 0.000), social skills with emotional intelligence (r value = .802 and p<0.000) and social competence with emotional intelligence (r value =.805 and p<0.000). The study showed that emotional intelligence partially mediated the relationships between social skills and social competency. Based on the results it is concluded that emotional intelligence is a strong predictor of social skills and social competence of teachers in elementary education context.