Abstract:

The research purpose was to analyze the features of emotional intelligence of staff working with children with intellectual disabilities and to find ways to develop it. The empirical study used the following psychological methods: emotional intelligence questionnaire (D.V. Lyusin, 2006); N. Hall’s emotional intelligence test (Ilyin, 2011); the method examining social and communicative competence (Fetiskin, Kozlov, Manuilov, 2002); V.V. Boyko’s questionnaire examining communicative tolerance (Ilyin, 2011).

The article discusses the main approaches to interpretation of emotional intelligence, its components, and various models of emotional intelligence, proposed by different researchers. Emotional intelligence is especially important during staff’s interaction with children with disabilities. This is due to the fact that a humane attitude towards children with disabilities and their parents is a professionally important quality of teachers and psychologists, characterizing staff’s communication with children or parents. The obtained data on staff’s communicative tolerance and social-communicative competence confirmed that this type of attitudes was leading.

The empirical study showed that, in general, emotional intelligence, as a person’s ability to cooperate with others, of staff working with children with intellectual disabilities was average. However, intrapersonal emotional intelligence was slightly lower, which required the use of compensatory functions of the psyche.

The indicators of staff’s social communicative tolerance were average, except for sociability and sensitivity, which were at an expressive level. The indicator of emotional stability in the structure of social communicative competence was lower than other indicators, so the staff was more vulnerable to various professional situations causing stress reactions.

Staff with more than 5 years of experience had significantly better developed emotional intelligence, most indicators of social communicative competence, communicative tolerance had higher values.

The program of emotional intelligence development was proposed for staff having less than 5 years of experience and showed its sufficient effectiveness. Significant differences for the average values before and after the program implementation were obtained for the indicators: sociability, emotional stability, sensitivity, independence, self-control and the general indicator of emotional intelligence. There were changes as a trend for the indicators of logical thinking, cheerfulness, disrespect of social norms. Further improvement of the proposed program for emotional intelligence development will allow working not only with staff who do not have sufficient working experience with children with disabilities, but also with experienced staff to correct certain components of their emotional intelligence.

Keywords:

Emotional intelligence, intrapersonal emotional intelligence, interpersonal emotional intelligence, communicative tolerance, social and communicative competence, children with intellectual disabilities, staff.