Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 31 (2012) 95 – 99

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1877-0428 © 2011 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer-review under responsibility of Prof. Hüseyin Uzunboylu.doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2011.12.022

Procedia Social and Behavioral Sciences Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences 00 (2011) 000–000

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Examining the relationship between emotional intelligence and learning styles

Badri Shatalebi a *, Saeed Sharifi b, Narges Saeedianc ,Hasan Javadi d Department of Educational sciences, Khorasgan (Isfahan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran Department of Educational sciences, Khorasgan (Isfahan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran Department of Educational sciences, Khorasgan (Isfahan) Branch, Islamic Azad University, Isfahan, Iran

Department of theology, Mohajer Branch .Isfahan, Iran

Abstract

Learning is a very complicated variable which is being affected by multiple factors such as intelligence, incentive, adequate environment, family and social parameters, quality of school and education, educator and etc. some type of intelligence e.g. emotional intelligence is one of the variables which is related to the learning style of individuals. Emotional intelligence has been described as skill, knowledge, and understanding which can guide our incentives to make us success in our life. On the other hand, learning style involves individual methods for processing information in learning new concepts. The main goal of this study includes explanation of the relationship between these two variables. It has been conducted on 320 B.A., M.A., and PhD. students. Its methodology is descriptive-correlational. For this propose, two emotional intelligence questionnaires Bar On with 15 components and Colb learning style questionnaire with four learning styles have been utilized. Data analysis was done according to descriptive and inferential statistics. Findings imply that among 15 components of emotional intelligence, only 3 components including intrapersonal relationships, impulse control, and happiness have been compatible with learning style. There was no relationship between other components of emotional intelligence and learning styles involve Divergent, Convergent, Adaptive, and Attractive. In a general explanation it can be said that emotional intelligence indicates individuals' ability where as learning style indicates individual preferences. So lack of relationship between these two variables can be justified. Keywords: intelligence, emotional intelligence, learning, learning style, students

1. Introduction

In today’s world, the swift variations in the area of science, communication and information technology, besides the emergence of new outlooks about social, political, economical and cultural issues have caused a substantial change in instructional and educational systems. The successful compatibility in the information era and the burst of science and technology need a person to have enough skills to be capable of searching for information, analyzing and applying them. The recent studies show that in order to do this important task, not only cognitive intelligence and talents are needed, but the excitement peculiarities, specially the excitement intelligence and social skills bear a great importance. (Sharifi ,2007)According to the Gardner’s idea, all people enjoy different levels of intelligence, so in a learning process they interact and complete one another.

* Badri Shatalebi. Tel:+989131268471 E-mail address: b_shahtalebi2005@yahoo.com

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The important factor in organizing a learning process, the group learning of social skills is a special new learning view point so it holds a special stand and manifests itself in excitement intelligence. Gardner (1989), Wong law (2004) believe that the excitement intelligence is the ability of a person in knowledge and expressing self and others’ moods, as well as, controlling the excitements and enforcing them in their daily activities. Mayer and his colleagues (2002) believe that the excitement intelligence is the last transition in understanding the connection between logic and thrill. They also believe that people are different in understanding abilities, expressing their excitements and realizing the excitement information management. (Warwick and Nettelbeck 2004)Mayer, Salovey and Karso believe that the excitement intelligence refers to the ability of identification, recognition of the meanings of excitement, their inter relations, reasoning about their needs, as well as solving the problems. Excitement intelligence includes the ability of receiving excitement, coordinating between excitements and relevant feeling, conceiving information relative to excitement, as well as the excitement management. (Mokhtari poor, Seyadat &Amiri, 2006) Many models of intelligence excitement have so far been offered. The presented models of Mayer and Salovey (1997), Golman, bar-on and Steve Heinz are among the well known models in this regard. Mayer and Salvys’ (1997) primary definition of intelligence excitement is shown and developed by a four branched model (Day , Newsom and victor ,2002).According to Stys and Brown (2004), the first branch is the feeling of an excitement including; self conscious ability of excitements and its necessities and the right way of expressing them to others. The second branch, inner-directed (introversive) excitement is about the ability of a person in distinguishing various excitements. The third branch is excitement understanding which means diagnosis of intricate excitements like; sudden feeling and excitement interactions between two people and finally; the forth branch is the excitement management that is about the power of excitement connection or disconnection based on its function in a specific condition. Another pattern that was brought up in excitement intelligence and is considered as our research foundation is the Bar-on pattern. According to this method the excitement intelligence includes 15 indexes.

a- Individual Inner Index that determines the abilities of a person in controlling the awareness of excitements and includes; excitement self conscious, courage, self esteem, self blooming and independence.

b- Individual Mid Index that includes the abilities of a person in interacting with others and social skills, consisting; mutual relations, social commitment and sympathy.

c- Adaptation Indexes including; flexibility, realism and ability of solving problems. d- Stress Control Indexes that determine the ability of controlling tension and shock. e- General Humour Index, indicating the person’s optimism and joy and includes happiness and good will.

Beside other cognitive abilities, the intelligence excitement prepares a ground for many activities like, multilateral environmental assessment, the power of compassionate communication, acquiring social skills and providing sentimental grounds and necessary connection for major and various activities like learning. Different people use different ways for learning, which is known as the learning method. Bennet (1990) believes that the style of learning is a steady pattern in behaviour and action through which a person acquires the necessary experiences. In fact, training method is a mixture of the cognitive characteristic attitudes, sentimental and physiological elements that act as rather steady components in this regard and causes a learner to realize its environment and react and interact to it.Nassp (2000) believes that the learning methods are psychological behaviours, sentimental and cognitive means to show that to what extent the learner has realized the subjects and reacted toward the learning environment. Pask, (2000) believes the method of learning is adopting a specific strategic process. According to the Draper’s idea (2003) the methods of learning are mental orderly attitudes and strategies that are established based on individual potentials and used as a habitual manner .Mascazine (2001) has the best known definition of learning style. He

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believes that the learning is a unique method through which the person understands and processes the new challenging information in the learning environments. Different models have been presented as the learning models. One of them is the Kolb method of learning. colb has recognized four learning methods:

1- Divergent Method, that consists of combining objective experiences and speculative observation. 2- Convergent Method as a mixture of abstractive thought and active experimental. 3- Attractive Learning Methods that combines both abstractive thought and speculative observation. 4- Adaptive Method which is a method of mixing objective experiences and active experiments.

Learning methods are affected by various variants like sex, character, race and method of teaching.Excitement intelligence is also related to variants such as; security, job progress and sex, Meanwhile some researches have been studying about determining the relationship between excitement intelligence and the method of learning, among which we can name the studies of;Smith (1996), Migliett & Strange (1998), Busato (1999), Sosik & Magerian (1999), Pask & Scott (2000), Dawda & Hart (2000), Barlling & colleagues (2000), Dunn & colleagues (2004), Giadenaka (2008), Suliman (2010) and Fong & Yeo (2007). As mentioned before, the present research is about analyzing the relation between the excitement intelligence based on Bar – on dimensions and Colb’s four-branched learning method. The main question is, weather there is a relation among the students about fifteen branched excitement intelligence dimensions and Colb four branch learning methods? 2. Method of Research, society, sample and research tools Since this research is a survey about the relationship between the dimensions of excitement intelligence and the methods of learning, therefore it is a definition of a kind of solidarity. The students of Khorasgan University constituted the statistical community of this research. Primarily four courses including; nursing, management, engineering and law were selected via adopting the random sampling method among the available courses, then based on the volume of the community in each course, some samples suitable with the capacity of each course in bachelors, maters and doctorate levels were chosen. The measuring tool in present research is a Bar-on excitement intelligence questionnaire with 90 questions in form of 15 indexes. The Colb’s learning method questionnaire contains 25 questions. The stability coefficient in questionnaires is calculated using the chronbach Alpha coefficient. The coefficient for the sentimental intelligence questionnaire is 91% and for learning methods is equal to 97% which indicates the high credit of both measuring tools. In order to determine the permissiveness of the questionnaires, the nominal and content permissive is used, for this means, the questionnaires were handed over to some experts in psychology and education courses and they confirmed them. 3. Discussion and result The results obtained from the overall analysis indicate that among 15 components of excitement intelligence including (excitement self conscious, courage, self esteem, self blooming, independence, inner-individual relations, social commitment, empathy, solving a problem, reality test, flexibility, tolerance, shock control, joy and optimism), there are only weak relations among;

The inner-individual relations and adaptive learning method component, The shock control and adaptive learning method component, and The joy and adaptive learning method component

Based on coefficients

5.4% for inner-individual relations and adaptive learning method 4.9% for shock control and adaptive learning method and 6.6% for joy and adaptive learning method

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Among other 13 exciting intelligence components and the rest of the learning methods, no specific relations were found. The adaptive method of learning is a style in which, the objective experience and active experiments are combined. These people enjoy the most by engaging themselves with new experiences and prefer to act than analyze. The way these people use such method is computerized simulation and taking a role. By determining the question about the research, we can say that concerning the adaptive method of learning characteristics, it seems that there is a closer relation between the feeling of joy, shock control and the inner-relations with this method of learning. Normally the people, who are happier, can easier control their antagonizing attitudes therefore they are more capable of establishing inner-individual connections. According to the above mentioned characteristics for the adaptive learning method, It seems that people enjoy a better condition regarding this method of learning with three component dimensions of excitement intelligence including; (inner-individual relations, shock control and joy).There was no relation between the other excitement intelligence components and methods of learning. The results of present research with Giadenakad’s (2008) are the same, because in present research too, there are only weak relations among three excitement intelligence and learning method components. Also, the outcomes of this research with Suliman’s (2010) are at the same level .Suliman has not reported any connections between colb’s four branched learning methods and Bar- on’s excitement intelligence components and has reached to a conclusion that the excitement intelligence may more be related to factors such as Cultural and professional values. But the result of the present research with Fong yeo’s (2007) has conformity with three learning methods of; divergence, convergence and adaptive, because these two researchers in their studied have mentioned the connection between these methods of learning with excitement intelligence, whereas, in attractive method of learning, the present research is conformed with Fong and yeo’s study, since these two researchers have not found a relation between the attractive method of learning and excitement intelligence either. In an overall view, we can say that the excitement intelligence shows the individual’s ability, while a learning method indicates the personal preferences but not the abilities. So there is a disconnection between the people’s abilities and their preferences. On the other side, the results showed that there was not a meaningful difference between the degree of excitement intelligence of the answerers regarding their sex and age. The results of present research showed that there were differences between the excitement intelligence of the answerers concerning their fields, in a way that the nursing students comparing with the students of law, engineering and management enjoyed a higher rate of excitement intelligence. The definite interpretation is that the students of nursing had higher abilities in excitement intelligence components such as; shock control, commitment and encouragements due to their special insights and peculiarities, therefore the excitement intelligence components are all, kinds of abilities that people acquire in real and objective circumstances. The results also showed that the degree of the excitement intelligence in students of doctorate level, in comparison with the students of BA and MA is higher. Apparently, the ability increases as the age, studies and encountering objective circumstances increase. So, since the doctorate students have hierarchy in age and environmental experiences, therefore they have gained higher scores in excitement intelligence.

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