Ivory Tower: Social-emotional differences impact teachers’ competency, finds study

Do social-emotional differences among teachers, specifically if they hail from urban or rural areas, impact their competency? The answer is in affirmative, as per a recent study by Tamanna Saini, a scholar from the Punjab Agricultural University.

The study on ‘Contribution of Social Emotional Competency of School Teachers Towards their Personal and Contextual Outcomes’ has revealed non-significant locale differences in overall teachers’ social-emotional competency.

Significant differences were found in self-efficacy, where teachers from urban areas had a better sense of self-efficacy than teachers from rural areas. Teachers from urban areas had significantly better teaching support, learners/students autonomy, interpersonal relationships, individual satisfaction and overall classroom climate. But this is not to say that the teachers from rural areas did not have their own strengths. They had better classroom management and physical arrangements.

Teachers from rural areas were found to be more cohesive, accepting and caring, with better active recreational orientation and organisation. Comparatively, teachers from urban areas reported more conflict in their family environment. Non-significant locale differences were observed in various dimensions of job satisfaction. Teachers from rural areas were significantly more proactive and had better learning organisation, whereas teachers from urban areas had better human relations.

The study was undertaken to assess teachers’ social-emotional competency and its personal and contextual outcomes.

The sample included 300 secondary school teachers in the age group of 30-40 years, teaching in government or private schools in rural and urban areas of Ludhiana district.

The respondents were fairly divided according to their locale (150 rural and 150 urban) and type of institution (150 government and 150 private). A self-structured personal information sheet, Teachers’ Social-Emotional Competency Scale (Nonglait and Myrthong 2020), Self-Efficacy Scale for Teachers (Talesara and Irfan 2017), Job Satisfaction Scale (Singh and Sharma 2012), Quality of Work Life Scale (Dhar et al 2008), Classroom Climate Scale (Krishnamoorthy and Srinivasan 2020) and Family Environment Scale (Bhatia and Chadha 1993) were utilised to gather pertinent data.

Based on the type of institution, private school teachers had better articulation of interpersonal knowledge and skills compared to government school teachers. However, government school teachers had better learners/students autonomy, interpersonal relationships and classroom management, whereas private school teachers had better availability of resources.

Private school teachers were found significantly more accepting and caring, independent, organised and had control over their family environment as compared to government school teachers. Government school teachers were more satisfied extrinsically and overall with their job. Non-significant differences were observed in self-efficacy and quality of work-life in both government and private school teachers. Teachers’ social-emotional competency was found to be positively and significantly contributing towards the self-efficacy, job satisfaction, quality of work-life, classroom climate and family environment of secondary school teachers.