Emotional intelligence and teaching practicum performance among Chinese preservice physical education teachers: the mediating role of teaching self-efficacy

The teaching practicum is the decisive transition from student to teacher in physical education (PE) teacher education, yet little is known about whether the emotional intelligence of preservice PE teachers relates to how they perform in school settings. This study examined whether emotional intelligence is associated with mentor-rated teaching practicum performance among Chinese preservice PE teachers and whether teaching self-efficacy accounts for part of this association. A total of 462 preservice PE teachers (43.3% women; mean age 20.97 years) from two cohorts at a university in Sanya, China, completed the Wong and Law Emotional Intelligence Scale and the short form of the Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale after a 16-week practicum in 38 partner schools; school-based PE mentors rated teaching practicum performance on a 12-item evaluation form. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the three-factor measurement model (CFI = 0.980, RMSEA = 0.019, SRMR = 0.037). Because students were nested in practicum schools (intraclass correlations 0.037 and 0.081), hypotheses were tested with 1–1-1 multilevel mediation models with school random intercepts and gender and age as covariates. Emotional intelligence was positively associated with practicum performance (total association B = 0.387, p < 0.001) and with teaching self-efficacy (B = 0.463, p < 0.001); teaching self-efficacy was in turn associated with practicum performance (B = 0.437, p < 0.001), and the indirect association through teaching self-efficacy was 0.202 (95% CI [0.144, 0.265], 2,000 school cluster bootstrap resamples), accounting for 52.3% of the total association. Single-level models with cluster-robust standard errors yielded virtually identical estimates. Self-reported emotional intelligence accompanies stronger practicum performance partly through teaching self-efficacy, suggesting that PE teacher education could pair emotional competence development with mastery experiences that build efficacy beliefs, pending experimental or longitudinal verification.