How can we differentiate emotional literacy from emotional intelligence?
- Can we use a standardized emotional intelligence scale to assess the emotional literacy?
Katherine Weare defines emotional literacy, in her book “Developing the Emotionally Literate School” as the ability to understand ourselves and other people, and in particular to be aware of, understand and use information about the emotional states of ourselves and others with competence. It includes the ability to understand, express and manage our own emotions, and respond to the emotions of others, in ways that are helpful to ourselves and others.
According to Goleman "Emotional intelligence is the capacity for recognizing our own feelings and those of others, for motivating ourselves, for managing emotions well ourselves and in our relationships" (Goleman, 1995).
According to my understanding the term 'Intelligence' defines ability to adjust with the environment, so as 'emotion intelligence' defined by Golemen, capacity to recognize our emotion and cope up with that. Emotional literacy is something you can learn by yourself from the external environment were as intelligence is in built in you. Genetics contributes for emotional intelligence. But for emotional literacy can be taught by others in the form of counselling, therapy, guidance to cope up with the emotion.
Literacy has two different meanings:
a) in the original sense it refers to reading and writing education
b) you can use as a metaphor to speak of basic skills in another domain: e.g. computer literacy.
Literacy b): Emotional literacy covers the basic skills, emotional intelligence the whole range.
Literacy a): You are able to understand emotional backgrounds in reading and to express emotions in writing. This is actually related to emotional intelligence, but the situational scope is far more narrow.
Dear Aneesh,
As far as I am concerned, the first (chronologically speaking) researcher who started thinking about IE was Lev Semenovich Vygotsky, a russian professor who published in the late 1800's and early 1900's. He mentions in his book "Psicologia Pedagógica" (published here in Brasil in 2004) that IE means to "control one's own feelings, to take instincts to the higher level of awarness..." (2004, p. 464); he thinks the teacher should use de emotions of the students to impact knowledge learning. Goleman investigates and does a great work in explaining how IE and AE happens. My reasearch group tried to bring together emotion and learning in our resarch of the academic reading and writing academic practices. I published some results here at Reseach Gate.
Hope I answered your question.
Sincerely yours,
Eveline
I regard 'Emotion Intelligence' - in Howard Gardner's terms - as those neuro-psychological processes going on inside the individual and which would help him/her with coping with oneself as well as people around..It's something like introspective/intrapersonal and interpersonal intelligences. On the other hand, Emotional Literacy - for me - relates to those specific dispositions, skills, attitudes and competencies that a person needs to master so as to cope emotionally with oneself (internally) and with others around (externally)..So, literacy is always related to tangible knowledge, skills, communication aspects, etc. that would indicate one's mastery of a specific area or discipline..Regards
Howard Gardner's great achievement has bee that he denied that intelligence is a general ability. He developed the model of multiple intelligence, and could admit that persons could be outstanding on various grounds. This is not directliy related to the question of emotional literacy.
While emotional intelligence expresses an individual, innate personality dynamics, emotional literacy is the combination of understanding, strategy and skills that a person can develop throughout the life. EL is much more convenient in educational process, as it underlines a process that can be improved by personal effort and observations.
Simply you can infer from literature related to this issue: 'Emotional literacy is the capacity to process the emotional intelligence that is genetically brought.'...
In my understanding: emotional intelligence is a competency. That is a mix of Knowledge, Skiils and Attitudes/Dispositions . Emotional Literacy is more related just to knowledge about emotions.
Emotional literacy allows me to name the emotions I am feeling or observing in others. Emotional Intelligence gives me the competency to handle emotional situations, events.
As part of my research I surveyed several hundreds of MBA students with just one question "Please write the names of as many emotions as you can during one minute"- It is a surprise that around 10% names "cold", "emotion", "tired", "feelings", etc. Terms that most of us can concurr there are not emotions.
One of my hipothesis is that those persons will have more difficulties improving their Emotional Intelligence than the others.
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