A case study of the relationship between Buddhist spiritual practices, teacher’s emotional intelligence and the teacher-student relationship in Hong Kong /

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Student Theses

2022

Li, Puni

Hong Kong : The Education University of Hong Kong

Thesis

Research studies on emotion in education have been emerging in recent years due to public concern about emotional health. Considering that teaching requires emotional labor, teachers’ emotional health and emotional capability are worthy of investigation. As an ancient religion with abundant accumulation of spiritual practices, Buddhism may provide relevant useful ideas. Therefore, this research, with its frames of reference on emotion in education and Buddhism, is initiated to explore the relationship between Buddhist spiritual practices and teacher emotional capacity and further investigate this relationship’s influence on the teacher-student relationship.The study was conducted in Hong Kong, a region that is influenced by Buddhism. Based on the extant academic literature on emotion and Buddhist spiritual practices, and the empirical data, the researcher investigated and discussed the impacts of long-term Buddhist spiritual practices on teacher emotions, and their further influence on the teacher-student relationship. Employing the research method of case study with the characteristic of using retrospective and reflexive life stories, three Hong Kong schoolteachers were interviewed and requested to make personal documents available, and their life stories were analyzed.The main finding is that there is a positive relationship between long-term Buddhist spiritual practices and Hong Kong teachers’ emotions. Their emotional intelligence, including attention, empathy, self-awareness, and self-regulation, was enhanced, leading them to perform better in their interactions with students. Moreover, the positive teacher-student relationships supported by Buddhist spiritual practices had extra beneficial impacts on at-risk students.Besides, the findings have been further analyzed and discussed. Compared to Goleman’s emotional intelligence theory, the impacts of long-term Buddhist spiritual practices on teacher emotions and their further influences on the teacher-student relationship featured the cognition of values and seemed to be holistic and even transcendent. Therefore, further research is suggested to explore the role of cognition in emotional capacity building. Regarding implications for practices, both training for readiness and continuous support for teachers’ spiritual state are important. Moreover, training on attention and self-compassion is also recommended for pre-service and in-service teacher development, in order to enhance emotional intelligence

LG51.H43 Dr 2022eb Lip

https://educoll.lib.eduhk.hk/records/nbAGNyoB