Impact of Emotional Intelligence on the Well-being of Teachers and Students

Teachers and students are the two most important entities of an educational ecosystem and their well-being is of paramount importance. Studies from across the world have reported a high prevalence of stress among teachers and students thus compromising their well-being. Any discussion on well-being can never be complete without a mention of emotional intelligence, a key skill in managing emotions, which in turn leads to well-being. This study attempts to understand the interplay between the emotional intelligence and well-being of teachers and students. The sample for the study included 100 teachers and 100 students from Government and private colleges in South India. Emotional Intelligence was measured using "DeepaKrishnaveni Emotional Intelligence Test", developed for adults in the Indian context. Well-being was assessed using the "General Well-being Scale", which measures the 6 facets of well-being. The study found a significant correlation between emotional intelligence and well-being among teachers and students. If the respondents were high in emotional intelligence, they reported a positive well-being. Thus this study has important implications for higher education institutions. Based on the outcomes, the study recommends Emotional Intelligence training as an effective intervention to enhance the well-being of Teachers and Students.


Introduction
Teachers and students are the two most important entities of an educational ecosystem and their well-being is of paramount importance.Recent research has brought out the fact that the well-being of both teachers and students has Lay (2020) opine that EI can improve the self-efficacy of teachers, thereby driving resilience.In a study conducted among teacher trainees, Malinauskas and Malinauskiene, (2020) found that there was an association between emotional intelligence and psychological well-being.Many other studies (Lucas-Mangas et al., 2022;Fu et al., 2021;Blasco-Belled et al., 2020;Tan, 2019;Molero et al., 2019) have also reported a significant positive association between EI and WB among teachers.
Studies that were conducted among students also show an association between emotional intelligence and well-being.Jugnu and Vivekananda (2018) found that many dimensions of EI assessed among students were significantly associated with psychological well-being.Moeller and colleagues (Moeller, Seehuus, & Peisch, 2020) found that EI enhances the experience of belongingness among students leading to better mental health and well-being.In a study conducted in Egypt (Ramadan, 2021) EI was reported as a strong predictor of the well-being of students.Extremera and colleagues (Extremera, Sanchez-Alvarez, & Rey, 2020) opine that the ability of emotional intelligence is associated with psychological well-being and subjective well-being.Across the many studies examined, only a few reported EI and WB scores across various demographics.This is an important gap to be filled by further research.Based on the literature review, it is evident that EI is significantly associated with well-being and that there is a dearth of studies that had examined these two variables across demographics.With this background, the study aims to answer the following objectives 1.To examine the association between the Emotinal Intelligence and well-being of both teachers and students 2. To examine if emotional intelligence and well-being vary across demographics.

Methodology
The study was conducted in Tamilnadu, the southernmost state of India.The sample included teachers and students from higher education institutions across Tamilnadu.A two-stage convenience sampling was used.In the first stage, the author shared the data collection tools with their first round of contacts.In the second stage, the first round of contacts were requested to share the tools with their known contacts.Responses were received from 113 teachers and 130 students out of which some responses were incomplete and had to be discarded.The final sample included 100 teachers and 100 students from the length and breadth of Tamilnadu.The demographics are shown in Table 1.(Krishnaveni & Ranganath, 2011) and has been used in another study (Dhani & Sharma, 2017) with adequate reliability and validity.
Well-being was assessed using the General Well-Being Scale which was initially developed by the National Center for Health Statistics and later revised by Duan (1996).The scale assesses well-being using 18 items on a 5-point Likert scale.

EI and Well-being of Teachers and Students
The main objective of the study was to examine the association between EI and well-being.The emotional intelligence scores of teachers and students are presented in Table 2.

SD = Standard Deviation
The mean EI score of both the teachers and students falls in the high range (79-88).The well-being scores of teachers and students are presented in Table 3.

SD = Standard Deviation
The mean well-being scores of teachers falls in the stress problem range (56-70) and that of students in the low positive well-being level (76-80).The emotional intelligence and well-being levels of teachers and students are presented in Tables 4 and 5

Association between EI and Well-being
The association between EI and well-being among teachers and students is presented in Tables 6 and 7 respectively.There was a significant correlation (r = 0.48) between the EI and well-being of teachers.The total EI of teachers was also found to be associated with anxiety, depression, positive well-being, vitality, and general health.There was a signficiant correlation between the EI scores and WB scores of students (r = 0.93).The total EI scores correlated with all the dimensions of WB.

Emotional Intelligence and Well-being across demographics
The emotional intelligence and well-being levels of teachers and students were compared and the results are shown in There was a significant difference in the well-being of teachers across gender.Men reported good well-being compared to women.Another interesting finding was that the students from Government Institutions reported high EI and high wellbeing compared to the students from Private Institutions.There was no significant difference in EI and WB among single and married respondents in both teachers and students.There were no gender differences in EI across teachers and There was no significant difference in the EI and WB of teachers across different age groups.Among the students, there were only two age groups (18-20; 21-30) and there was a significant difference in both EI and WB across the groups.
Students in the 18 to 20 age group had a high EI and WB compared to those in the 21 to 30 group.The EI and WB scores were same irrespective of the educational qualification of teachers.However, among students, those with PhD reported a higher WB.

Discussions
The study found that 63 percent of the students had a very high level of emotional intelligence compared to 42 percent among teachers (Table 2).This is in line with a study from Spain (Toscano-Hermoso et al., 2020) which found that 50 percent of the students had adequate emotional intelligence abilities.Despite the high levels of EI, suicidal tendencies and stress prevail among the students and teachers respectively.This shows that there is a lack of application of EI skills.A systematic training program that creates awareness about this ability and its application can lead to the skill being put to good use.Studies from across the world (van Wingerden et al., 2017;Hodzic et al., 2017;Bakker et al., 2016) report positive outcomes of EI training programs.A couple of studies in the Indian context (Panicker, Deepa, Vimala, & Poornima, 2021;Deepa & Arulrajan, 2020) have proven the effectiveness of EI training programs offered to students in higher education institutions.Based on this, the authors recommend that systematic training programs be designed and offered to teachers and students, which could help them put their abilities to better use.
It was found that only 12 percent of the teachers reported positive well-being compared to 51 percent of the students who had positive well-being (Table 3).This corroborates with the high prevalence of stress levels among teachers, thus impacting their well-being.The association between EI and well-being has been established by many previous studies outlined in the literature review.It is evident from Table 4 that 63 percent of the students had a high EI score and hence it is obvious that most of them had reported positive well-being.However, it is to be noted with caution that 39 percent of the students had stress problems and 48 percent of teachers reported significant stress levels.Referring to the association between EI and well-being and the effectiveness of EI training programs, the study warrants the need for the systematic inclusion of EI training programs and interventions to improve well-being in the teaching-learning environment.
The EI scores of teachers were found to be significantly associated with their well-being scores (Table 6).The outcome of this study corroborates with the results of the previous studies on teachers (Lucas-Mangas et al., 2022;Fu et al., 2021;Blasco-Belled et al., 2020;Tan, 2019;Molero et al., 2019).The study also reiterates the outcome of another study (Kamboj & Garg, 2021) in the Indian context.Regulation, a constituent of emotional intelligence was found to be strongly associated with total well-being (r=0.516;See Table 6).This supports the notion that the ability of teachers to regulate their emotions will have a positive effect on their well-being (Suarez-Martel & Martin Santana, 2021).Ngui and Lay (2020) stated that EI can drive resilience and improve well-being.Anjum and Swathi (2017) reported that teachers with high EI had low-stress levels.The scoring of the General Well-Being Scale is such that a high score in the anxiety and depression construct means the respondents are experiencing less anxiety and depression.Hence it is proven that the higher the EI, the lower the stress level, anxiety, and depression and hence improved resilience.
The statistics in Table 7 show that there was a significant association between the emotional intelligence ability of students and their well-being.Jugnu and Vivekananda (2018) reported that several dimensions of EI were associated with well-being.In this study also all the constituents of EI namely perception, appraisal, and regulation had a significant association with the well-being scores.Moeller and colleagues (Moeller et al., 2020) reported that high EI leads to an increased sense of belongingness leading to better mental health.In this study, it was found that EI was significantly associated with vitality and general health.The review showed an increase in suicidal tendencies among students and Tamilnadu was found to rank third in the number of suicides among students.The outcome of this study shows that EI is significantly associated (r=0.766;see Table 7) with self-control.The results of this study show that EI, if imparted as an ability can help students overcome their stress and suicidal tendencies, leading to their well-being.
There was a significant difference in the EI and WB scores of teachers and students (See Table 8).Students had scored high in terms of EI and WB.This finding needs to be explored further.There was a dearth of studies that reported demographic differences in EI and WB among teachers and students.This study found some differences.However, these findings warrant further investigation.There was no significant difference in the EI scores across gender (See Table 9), which contradicts the the findings of previous studies (Kamboj & Garg, 2021;Soanes & Sungoh, 2019).There was no significant difference in EI scores across gender among the students also.Men had a higher WB compared to women among teachers which again contradicts the findings from previous research (Juniarly et al, 2018;Shaheen & Shaheen, 2016).Students from Government Institutions had high emotional intelligence and reported high WB levels compared to students from Private Institutions.This needs further exploration.The academic environment of both Institutions should be studied in depth to understand the underlying reasons.This warrants a pheonmenological study among the students of both type of Institutions.
A comparision across the econmic status of teachers showed that teachers belonging to upper middle class had higher EI (See Table 10).This result has to be dealt with in detail in further research studies.There was no difference in both EI and WB across the different age groups of teachers.However, students belonging to the 18 to 20 age group reported high EI and high WB (See Table 11) compared to those in the 21-30 age group.It was also found that students with PhD reported high WB (See Table 12).All these findings need to be analyzed in depth, which forms a solid scope for future research.Teachers and students are facing a significant amount of stress as reported by several studies, leading to a negative impact on their well-being The impact on the well-being can directly affect the teaching-learning process, thereby reducing the efficacy of higher education institutions in imparting knowledge to their student stakeholders.This study added insights to the existing research by highlighting the significant association between emotional intelligence and well-being among both teachers and students.The signficant association between EI and well-being of both teachers and students

Implications
shows that EI can be used as an effective intervention to enhance their well-being.Training programs that were designed to impart EI skills to teachers and students were found to be effective (van Wingerden et al., 2017;Hodzic et al., 2017;Bakker et al., 2016;Panicker, Deepa, Vimala, & Poornima, 2021;Deepa & Arulrajan, 2020).Hence policymakers and administrators should take measures to introduce emotional intelligence in their curriculum and should also impart EI training to their faculty members.By doing so, they can achieve positive outcomes such as improved engagement, worklife balance, quality of life, self-efficacy, overall life satisfaction, and well-being for the two most important stakeholders of our education system.

Conclusion
The study was conducted in Tamilnadu among respondents (both teachers and students) from private and Government Institutions.The working environment of both these systems is different and hence the study can examine the mediating role of the education environment of private and Government Institutions on the association between EI and well-being.
The effect of socio-demographic factors on this association and the differences in EI and well-being across those factors of respondents; Percent = Percentage of respondents Out of the respondents 42 percent of teachers have very high EI and and 42 percent have moderately high to high EI.On the contrary, 80 percent of the students seem to have high to very high EI.
should be examined in detail to design interventions.A phenomenological study on the challenges faced by the teachers and students in the state of Tamilnadu can provide valuable information on the prevalent challenges, thereby enabling the implementation of effective interventions.The study can be repeated with respondents from across the world to gain more insights.The study will serve as a blueprint and warrant the attention of researchers to the threat to the well-being of both teachers and students.The author concludes with a request that the educational administrators and policymakers should design effective interventions to ensure the well-being of teachers and students.

Table 8 .
EI and WB of Teachers and Students -A statistical comparisonThere was a significant difference in both EI and WB of teachers and students.Students were high in both EI and WB.
The emotional intelligence and well-being levels of teachers and students were compared across demographics namely age, gender, marital status, qualification, economic status, and type of institution.The results are presented below

Table 9 .
EI and WB of Teachers and Students across Gender, Marital Status, and Institution Type

Table 10 .
EI and WB of Teachers and Students across Economic StatusThere was a difference in the EI levels of teachers across economic status.Teachers belonging to upper middle class had higher EI compared to that of teachers from Lower Middle Class.There was no difference in well-being across the various groups.Students from all strata had same levels of EI and well-being.No statistical difference was found.

Table 11 .
EI and WB of Teachers and Students across Age Groups