School Leaders’ Emotional Intelligence, Teacher Work Engagement, and Challenges in Professional Growth

This study examined teachers’ perceptions of school leaders’ emotional intelligence, teacher work engagement, and challenges in achieving professional growth and maintaining well-being in selected public elementary and secondary schools in the Division of Maguindanao del Norte. A quantitative descriptive-correlational design involved 362 purposively selected respondents. A structured questionnaire assessed four emotional-intelligence domains, three work-engagement dimensions, and ten professional-growth and well-being challenges. Frequencies, percentages, means, standard deviations, independent-samples t tests, one-way analysis of variance, and Pearson correlations were used. Respondents strongly agreed with indicators of leaders’ self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management and with indicators of their own vigor, dedication, and absorption. The overall challenge mean was 2.40 (SD = 0.73), interpreted as Disagree, although respondents endorsed needing more instructional feedback, limited professional-development time because of workload, and difficulties integrating technology. Selected gender, rank, and school-type comparisons differed significantly; age and teaching-experience comparisons did not. Overall perceived emotional intelligence was positively associated with overall work engagement (r = .551, p < .01). Relationships involving professional-growth challenges were nonsignificant. Findings informed the proposed THRIVE-BARMM Professional Development Program. The results support attention to emotionally responsive leadership and targeted professional support but do not establish causal effects or program effectiveness.