EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND EDUCATIONAL LEADERSHIP: RELATIONSHIPS WITH CREATIVE SCHOOL CLIMATE AND TEACHER JOB SATISFACTION

Evangelia Kouroupi

Abstract


This quantitative study investigates the relationship between primary school principals’ emotional intelligence, creative school climate, and teachers’ job satisfaction. The research was conducted in ten of the twelve primary schools in the city of Corinth, Greece, between September and November of the 2017–2018 school year. Participants comprised 10 school principals and 72 teachers. Data were collected through two questionnaires incorporating scales adapted from the Wong Law Emotional Intelligence Scale, the Overall Job Satisfaction scale, the Maslach Burnout Inventory, and a creative school climate questionnaire. Data analysis was performed using SPSS and included descriptive statistics, Cronbach’s alpha internal-consistency coefficients, and Pearson correlations, with statistical significance set at 0.05. Teachers rated principals’ emotional intelligence as satisfactory (M=36.23, SD=5.79, α=0.777), while job satisfaction was relatively high (M=56.74, SD=8.14, α=0.830). Principals’ emotional intelligence was positively associated with creative school climate (r=0.533, p<0.001), and creative climate was positively associated with teachers’ job satisfaction (r=0.422, p<0.001). In contrast, no statistically significant direct relationship was found between principals’ emotional intelligence and teachers’ job satisfaction. The findings highlight the importance of emotional and interpersonal competencies in school leadership, particularly for fostering a supportive and creative organizational climate. They also suggest that teacher job satisfaction is a multifactorial phenomenon and that school climate may represent an important intermediate domain of influence.

Keywords


emotional intelligence, educational leadership, school climate, job satisfaction, school principals

Full Text:

PDF

References


Athanasoula-Reppa A, 2001. Educational Administration and Organizational Behavior. Ellinika Grammata, Athens, Greece.

Bar-On R, 2006. The Bar-On model of emotional-social intelligence (ESI). Psicothema 18: 13-25. Retrieved from https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2006-12699-003

Brayfield AH, Rothe HF, 1951. An index of job satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology 35: 307-311. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0055617

Dinham S, Scott C, 2000. Moving into the third, outer domain of teacher satisfaction. Journal of Educational Administration, 38(4):379-396. https://doi.org/10.1108/09578230010373633

Goleman D, 1999. Working with Emotional Intelligence. Bloomsbury Publishing, London, UK. Retrieved from https://books.google.ro/books/about/Working_with_Emotional_Intelligence.html?id=yE1gHqW_T_0C&redir_esc=y

Goleman D, Boyatzis R, McKee A, 2002. Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA, USA. Retrieved from https://books.google.ro/books/about/Working_with_Emotional_Intelligence.html?id=yE1gHqW_T_0C&redir_esc=y

Hallinger P, Heck RN, 1998. Exploring the principal’s contribution to school effectiveness. School Effectiveness and School Improvement 9(2). https://doi.org/10.1080/0924345980090203

Kasapa D, Lekka N, 2016. The Emotional Intelligence of the Primary School Principal/Leader as a Factor in Creative School Climate and Teachers’ Job Satisfaction. Piraeus University of Applied Sciences, Greece.

Kavouris P, 1998. School Climate in Primary Education: An Important Factor in the Evaluation and Effectiveness of the School Unit. Pedagogical Review.

Maslach C, Jackson SE, 1986. Maslach Burnout Inventory. Consulting Psychologists Press, Palo Alto, CA, USA. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/277816643_The_Maslach_Burnout_Inventory_Manual

Pasiardi G, 2001. School Climate: Theoretical Analysis and Empirical Investigation of Its Basic Parameters. Typothito, Athens, Greece.

Peterson K, Deal T, 1998. How leaders influence the culture of schools. Educational Leadership. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/45157470

Platsidou M, 2010. Emotional Intelligence: Theoretical Models, Measurement Methods, and Applications in Education and Work. Gutenberg, Athens, Greece.

Saitis C, 2007. The Principal in the Contemporary School. Self-published, Athens, Greece.

Salovey P, Mayer JD, 1990. Emotional intelligence. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 9: 185-211.

Vasiou A, 2008. The Effect of Principals’ Emotional Intelligence on School Climate, Job Satisfaction, Emotions at Work, and Teacher Burnout: A Two-Level Data Analysis. University of Thessaly, Greece.

Wong CS, Law KS, 2002. The effects of leader and follower emotional intelligence on performance and attitude: An exploratory study. The Leadership Quarterly 13: 243-274. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1048-9843(02)00099-1




DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.46827/ejes.v13i9.6982

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


Copyright (c) 2026 Evangelia Kouroupi

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Copyright © 2015-2026. European Journal of Education Studies (ISSN 2501 - 1111) is a registered trademark of Open Access Publishing Group. All rights reserved.

This journal is a serial publication uniquely identified by an International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) serial number certificate issued by Romanian National Library (Biblioteca Nationala a Romaniei). All the research works are uniquely identified by a CrossRef DOI digital object identifier supplied by indexing and repository platforms. All authors who send their manuscripts to this journal and whose articles are published on this journal retain full copyright of their articles. All the research works published on this journal are meeting the Open Access Publishing requirements and can be freely accessed, shared, modified, distributed and used in educational, commercial and non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).