Teacher Efficacy and Trait Emotional Intelligence in EFL: a case study

This study focused on Teacher Efficacy (TE) and the way it is influenced by trait Emotional Intelligence (trait EI) in the context of English as a foreign language (EFL). Teacher Efficacy pertains to self-referent beliefs of teachers’ competence to decide upon, design and implement classroom strategies while trait Emotional Intelligence refers to emotion-related self-perceptions reflected in distinctive ways of thinking, recognizing, managing and expressing emotions. 27 in-service secondary education EFL teachers from the prefecture of Trikala participated in this research, which revealed they felt highly self-efficacious. The length of time a teacher instructed a specific group of students was the most significant predictor of Teacher Efficacy. Also, all four Teacher Efficacy scales positively correlated with global trait Emotional Intelligence and all trait Emotional Intelligence facets, and had a statistical significance with most of them thus proving that the two constructs share common characteristics.