"Emotional intelligence" in the classroom? an aristotelian critique

Educational Theory

Volumn 56, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 39-56

  Kristjánsson, Kristján ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF AKUREYRI   (Iceland)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33845998845     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2006.00002.x     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. See, for example, Kristján Kristjánsson, "In Defence of 'Non-Expansive' Character Education," Journal of Philosophy of Education 36, no. 2 (2002): 135-156.
2. It might be disputed whether SEL is best understood as a trend in moral education rather than, for example, a contribution to the areas of social competence or mental health. I would insist on the former categorization, however, for three reasons: (1) Goleman, whose writings on emotional intelligence have helped to unleash the ideas behind SEL, strongly emphasizes the moral implications of emotional intelligence (as will be discussed in this essay);
3. (2) SEL incorporates various insights from CE, and in practical school settings SEL seems most commonly to have found a home within CE, moral education, or civics classes;
4. and (3) from an Aristotelian perspective, SEL would undoubtedly be considered to belong to the moral domain, in the same sense of "moral" as in Aristotle's specification of phronesis as practical moral wisdom and praxis as moral practice. For more on this last point, see Kristján Kristjánsson, "Smoothing It: Some Aristotelian Misgivings About the Phronesis-Praxis Perspective on Education," Educational Philosophy and Theory 37, no. 4 (2005): 455-473.
5. See especially Daniel Goleman, Emotional Intelligence (New York: Bantam Books, 1995), xv. This work will be cited as GEI in the text for all subsequent references.
6. See, for example, Maurice J. Elias et al., Promoting Social and Emotional Learning: Guidelines for Educators (Alexandria, Virginia: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, 1997), 2.
7. See, for example, Howard Gardner, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences (New York: Basic Books, 1983);
8. Howard Gardner, Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice (New York: Basic Books, 1993); and Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer, "Emotional Intelligence," Imagination, Cognition, and Personality 9 (1990): 185-211.
9. Compare with Peter Salovey and David J. Sluyter, eds., Emotional Development and Emotional Intelligence (New York: Basic Books, 1997).
10. John D. Mayer, Peter Salovey, and David R. Caruso, "Competing Models of Emotional Intelligence," in Handbook of Human Intelligence, 2d ed., ed. Robert J. Sternberg (New York: Cambridge University Press), 396-420.
11. See various references in Gerald Matthews, Moshe Zeidner, and Richard D. Roberts, Emotional Intelligence: Science and Myth (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002), 4. This work will be cited as SM in the text for all subsequent references.
12. John D. Mayer and Casey D. Cobb, "Educational Policy on Emotional Intelligence: Does It Make Sense?" Educational Psychology Review 12, no. 2 (2000): 163-183, esp. 170 and 174.
13. According to a typical cognitive view, an emotion comprises four main components: (1) a characteristic cognition (belief or recognition) - that which gives the emotion a direction, its focus on a (propositional) object;
14. (2) a characteristic desire, the satisfaction or frustration of which gives rise to
15. (3) the emotion's typical affect (feeling) of pain or pleasure;
16. and (4) a common behavioral pattern. Of those components, the cognitive is taken to be the crucial one in individuating emotions. Cognitive views constitute the reigning paradigm of emotion research in current mainstream philosophy and psychology;
17. see, for example, Aaron Ben-Ze'ev's extensive exploration of the current state of play in both fields in The Subtlety of Emotions (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2000). While generally sympathetic to the cognitive model, I offer some critical comments on it in Kristján Kristjánsson, Justifying Emotions: Pride and Jealousy (New York: Routledge, 2002), chap. 1.
18. For a general conceptual account of Aristotelian emotional virtue, see Robert C. Roberts, "Aristotle on Virtues and Emotions," Philosophical Studies 56, no. 3 (1989): 293-306.
19. Aristotle, On Rhetoric, trans. George A. Kennedy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 155-157 [1386b-1387a].
20. Daniel Goleman, The New Leaders: Transforming the Art of Leadership into the Science of Results (London: Little Brown, 2002), 251.
21. Goleman's Emotional Intelligence provides numerous examples of this.
22. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. Terence Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1985), esp. 1-8 [1094a-1096a]. This work will be cited as NE in the text for all subsequent references.
23. Ruut Veenhoven, "The Four Qualities of Life: Ordering Concepts and Measures of the Good Life," Journal of Happiness Studies 1, no. 1 (2000): 1-39, esp. 6, 12, and 28.
24. Goleman, The New Leaders, 14.
25. Recently, objective performance-based and ability-based instruments of EI (MEIS and MSCEIT) have been introduced, with the intent of superseding the self-report subjective measures. They are, however, saddled with problems of low construct validity and poor predictive validity (see SM, 226-229).
26. For more on this, see Kristján Kristjánsson, "Fortunes-of-Others Emotions and Justice," Journal of Philosophical Research 28 (2003): 105-128.
27. I argue for this in some detail in Kristján Kristjánsson, "On the Very Idea of 'Negative Emotions,' " Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 33, no. 4 (2003): 351-364.
28. Goleman, The New Leaders, 13.
29. Daniel Goleman, "Afflictive and Nourishing Emotions," in Healing Emotions: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Mindfulness, Emotions, and Health, ed. Daniel Goleman (Boston: Shambhala, 1997), 33-46, esp. 34.
30. See, for example, Goleman, "Afflictive and Nourishing Emotions."
31. See, for example, Sharon Salzberg and Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Mindfulness as Medicine," in Healing Emotions, ed. Goleman, 107-144.
32. Similar misapprehensions mar Elliot D. Cohen's recent self-help book, What Would Aristotle Do? Self-Control through the Power of Reason (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus, 2003).
33. Daniel Goleman, "Afflictive and Nourishing Emotions," in Healing Emotions: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Mindfulness, Emotions, and Health, ed. Daniel Goleman (Boston: Shambhala, 1997), 33-46, esp. 34.
34. See, for example, Goleman, "Afflictive and Nourishing Emotions."
35. See, for example, Sharon Salzberg and Jon Kabat-Zinn, "Mindfulness as Medicine," in Healing Emotions, ed. Goleman, 107-144.
36. Similar misapprehensions mar Elliot D. Cohen's recent self-help book, What Would Aristotle Do? Self-Control through the Power of Reason (Buffalo, New York: Prometheus, 2003).
37. For an elaboration of this point, see Paula Gottlieb, "Are the Virtues Remedial?" Journal of Value Inquiry 35, no. 3 (2001): 343-354.
38. For more on this, see Kristjánsson, Justifying Emotions, chaps. 3-5.
39. For a lucid exploration of Aristotle's method, see Terence Irwin, Aristotle's First Principles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990).
40. For an account of Aristotle's emphasis on truth and causal knowledge when teaching students, see Mary M. Spangler, Aristotle on Teaching (Lanham, Maryland: University Press of America, 1998), chap. 1.
41. Paul Harris, Children and Emotion: The Development of Psychological Understanding (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989), 109-125.
42. David Carr, "Feelings in Moral Conflict and the Hazards of Emotional Intelligence," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 5, no. 1 (2002): 3-21, esp. 18 and 20.
43. Goleman, "Introduction," in Healing Emotions, 1-6; Goleman, "Afflictive and Nourishing Emotions," 40.
44. For more on this point, see Kristján Kristjánsson, "Empathy, Sympathy, Justice, and the Child," Journal of Moral Education 33, no. 3 (2004): 291-305.
45. Elias et al., Promoting Social and Emotional Learning, 2.
46. Jonathan Cohen, ed., Educating Minds and Hearts: Social Emotional Learning and the Passage into Adolescence (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999).
47. For a concise comparison of the basic concepts of EI, SEL, and CE, see Mayer and Cobb, "Educational Policy on Emotional Intelligence," 167.
48. See Elias et al., Promoting Social and Emotional Learning; and Cohen, ed., Educating Minds and Hearts.
49. See, for example, Mayer and Cobb, "Educational Policy on Emotional Intelligence," 181; and Matthews et al., Emotional Intelligence: Science and Myth, 78-79.
50. For some enlightening neo-Aristotelian work on emotional cultivation and schooling, see Nancy Sherman, "The Role of Emotions in Aristotelian Virtue," Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium in Ancient Philosophy 9 (1993): 1-33;
51. and Jan Steutel and Ben Spiecker, "Cultivating Sentimental Dispositions Through Aristotelian Habituation," Journal of Philosophy of Education 38, no. 4 (2004): 531-549.