The investigation of early childhood teachers' emotional intelligence and critical thinking tendencies

This research was conducted to examine the emotional intelligence and critical thinking dispositions of early childhood teachers. The study group of the research consists of 351 early childhood teachers working at independent kindergartens affiliated to the Ministry of Education in Turkey in the 2020-2021 academic year. The research is in the relational screening model, which is one of the quantitative research models. In order to collect data for the research, the following scales were used: "Personal Information Form", "Emotional Intelligence Scale / Psicometric Properties of the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (TEIQue)" and "Critical Thinking Disposition (EDE)". The subdimension and total scores of the "Emotional Intelligence Scale" indicated a normal distribution, whereas these scores of the "Critical Thinking Disposition" scale indicated the opposite. Therefore, parametric tests were used in the analyzes of the "Emotional Intelligence Scale" and non parametric tests were used in the analyzes of the "Critical Thinking Tendency" scale. As the findings of the study indicate, it was determined that the emotional intelligence of early childhood teachers was high. While the emotional intelligence of the teachers does not differ significantly according to the variables of marital status and the type of institution they work in; It was determined that there are significant differences in the "Socialism" subdimension according to the educational status variable and in the "Well-being, Self-Control, Emotional" subdimensions in the variable of years of service. Early childhood teachers' critical thinking dispositions were found to be high on average. The teachers' critical thinking tendencies did not differ significantly in terms of marital status and educational status variables, however; it has been observed that there are significant differences in the "Flexibility, Systematicity" subdimensions according to the variable of years of service and the "Open-mindedness" subdimension in the variable of the type of institution they work for. It has been determined that there is a moderate positive relationship between the emotional intelligence of early childhood teachers and their critical thinking dispositions.