Turkish prospective early childhood teachers’ emotional intelligence level and its relationship to their parents’ parenting styles

The current study explored Turkish prospective early childhood teachers’ emotional intelligence scores in order to determine whether levels indicated differentiations according to grade level, and parenting style. Participants responded to the Turkish version of the Parenting Style Inventory and Emotional Intelligence Scale (EIS). EIS also contains the Perception of Own Emotions (POE), Understanding Others’ Emotions (UOE) and Regulating Emotions (RE) subscales. Study findings revealed that participants had moderate scores on the POE, UOE, and RE subscales and for whole emotional intelligence. Significant differences in total emotional intelligence and some subscales were found among grade levels and parenting styles. However findings showed that prospective teachers’ EI level did not increase as their professional education level increases. Also, prospective teachers with neglecting parents obtained the lowest mean scores from the total scale and every subscale for EIS. The study concluded that teacher education programs should support emotional development too.