Investigation of the relationships between emotional intelligence level and social emotional learning skills of high school students

The present study aims to investigate the relationship between emotional intelligence and social and emotional learning and to investigate whether there are differences on the levels of two constructs in terms gender and grade. Study group consists of 648 high school students (249 females, 399 males) studying at Bursa Ataturk Anadolu High School in 2014. In this study, relationships between the variables of emotional intelligence and social emotional learning were investigated. Pearson Product Moment Correlation method was used in order to examine these relationships. The differences on the levels of emotional intelligence and social and emotional learning in terms of gender, and grade level variables were examined with the statistical procedures of independent samples t-test (for variables having two groups) and One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA; for variables having more than two groups) were utilized. Tukey's Multiple Comparison Test was employed in order to find which pair of groups statistically significant differences after the results of ANOVA. In addition, descriptive statistics such as mean, standard deviation and percentile values were calculated. As results of the study, emotional intelligence and social and emotional intelligence scores were correlating significantly and positively. The study found a positive and medium correlation between emotional intelligence and peer relations, goal setting, and self-management sub-dimensions at high school students. The study suggests that there is no difference in emotional intelligence levels in terms of gender variable. Emotional intelligence scores of 9, 10, 11 and 12th graders shows no significant difference. When it comes to social and emotional learning, the study found that the female students got higher scores than the male students. The study also suggests that social and emotional learning level of the 9th grade students are higher than 10,11 and 12th grade students. Findings were discussed in the literature related to variables. Keywords: Emotional Intelligence, Social Emotional Learning, Middle School