Abstract:

Teacher stress significantly increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. In order to deal with students’ and their own stress, teachers need a high level of emotional intelligence (EI). Consequently, they need support from their colleagues and administration. To lower the stress, they also need to be actively involved in teacher professional development (TPD), to find better ways to tackle the problems. The goal of our research was to find out whether these two variables - EI and TPD - are correlated, as well as to understand to what degree teachers suffered from stress and how efficient the support offered to them was. A survey in Likert scale and multiple choice (rating) format was held with 200 school teachers in various countries, and its results were treated statistically. The obtained data revealed that teachers considerably suffered emotionally, while the support they obtained did not always correspond to their needs. It is possible to say that the emotional intelligence of those teachers who got sufficient qualified support has increased during the pandemic period.

Keywords:

Emotional Intelligence, Teacher Professional Development, COVID-19.