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Emotional Intelligence and Self-Efficacy of Physical Education Teachers

ing scale, suggesting that teachers generally report relatively high levels of
EI. These findings align with previous studies assessing EI among PE teachers
(Mouton et al., 2013; Watson & Kleinert, 2017), which also documented simi-
larly high self-reported EI levels. When evaluating SE using the NTSES scale,
we found that teachers generally hold positive perceptions of their profes-
sional effectiveness. Comparable trends have been reported in studies in-
volvingItalianprimaryandsecondaryschoolteachers(Avanzietal.,2013)and
Serbian primary school teachers (Djigić et al., 2014).
When examining gender differences in perceived EI, female teachers re-
ported significantly higher levels of emotionality compared to their male
counterparts. This suggests that women are more likely to perceive them-
selves as capable of expressing emotions, demonstrating affection, and en-
gaging in empathic understanding. These results are consistent with those of
Puertas-Molero et al. (2018), who also found gender differences in EI among
Spanish PE teachers, with women scoring higher. Similar findings were re-
ported by Pongrac et al. (2019) in a cross-cultural study of Croatian and
Portuguese adults, where women outperformed men in emotional percep-
tion, understanding, and empathy – particularly in empathic concern and
perspective-taking. The observed gender differences in EI may be attributed
to traditional societal gender stereotypes, which commonly associate traits
such as nurturing, empathy, and caring with females, and attributes like am-
bition, power, and competitiveness with males. These stereotypes suggest
that from an early age, girls are socialized to be more emotionally and inter-
personally oriented (Stewart et al., 2021). Furthermore, our study found no
gender differences in the SE of PE teachers. Previous research on this topic
has yielded mixed results: some studies suggest that gender does not signif-
icantly influence teachers’ SE (Yada & Savolainen, 2017), while others report
that men tend to perceive themselves as more effective in managing class-
room behaviour (Klassen & Chiu, 2010).
Based on the analysis of the relationship between EI and work experience,
our findings indicate that PE teachers with longer teaching tenure exhibit
higher levels of self-control and sociability compared to their less experi-
enced colleagues. Similar results were reported by Kostić-Bobanović (2020),
who found that more experienced foreign language teachers scored higher
on the self-control and sociability dimensions than those with less experi-
ence. However, other studies have found no significant association between
EI and teachers’ work experience (D’Amico et al., 2020; Galanakis et al., 2021).
The dimension of self-control refers to the ability to manage one’s im-
pulses and desires, as well as the capacity to cope with challenging situa-

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