Psycholinguistic features of the development of social intelligence of the teacher

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Psycholinguistic features of the development of social intelligence of the teacher

The problem of social intelligence of specialists and, in particular, of teachers, is very important nowadays because of such moments. First of all, communication skills are culture-universal in the most aspects but also contain culture-specific element. There are two broadly different categories - non-native speakers using English among themselves, nonnative speakers using English to native speakers of the language (Wing, Sotaro & Goldin-Meadow, 2013; Hestvik, Bradley, E. & Bradley, C., 2012). The problem is that non-native speakers may make «social» mistakes, and in this case social intelligence plays the main role.

Subsequently it is important to consider another level at which we can see communication - namely in terms of its role in a cross - cultural environment. Intercultural communication may be defined as an ability, possibly more acquired than innate, to engage in successful communicative interactions with people representing different languages, cultures, social mores and norms of behavior. It implies not only mastery and judicious use of language in itself but also skillful application of suitable social conventions with cultural sensitivity, political correctness as well as attention to needs and wants of a given group or a particular individual.

Nowadays in the world of work the range of business knowledge and skills needed to perform effectively has increased. Business people are much more likely today to find themselves together with others from different national and cultural backgrounds. The internationalization of the business world has provided a new challenge for Business English Teachers. However, the role of the Business English Teacher is to teach language and communication. It is not teacher's responsibility to teach culture, change behavior patterns. The teacher should be aware of the interrelationship between language, communication and culture and help the learners to better understand the interrelationship, to avoid conflicts because of innocent use of inappropriate language or communication.

Also communication skills are central to the activity of today's business professional. Business people actually needed lots of help with presentation skills, with meetings, negotiating even socializing or writing reports, e-mails. Teaching Business English include an effective communicator alongside and an effective use of language. As a result, the demands on BE teachers have increased to some extent. Everybody also needs to be able to teach communication skills. Constant language change introduces new forms; communication adapts to evolving behavioral and technological standards; and business both initiates and responds to changing practices. This requires the range of skills needed by the Business English teacher. Teachers should have a high degree of proficiency in the target language since the lesson in the classroom tends to be less predictable, apart from good knowledge of General English, Business English teacher should have good business background that comprise knowledge of Business vocabulary and common business situations which learners are going to deal with.

Language teaching and learning has entered a phase which takes a more constructivist view of learning emphasizing personal learning and discovery on the part of the learner, with more task-based, collaborative work between learners, and a more facilitating role for the teacher.

In «teacher - student» communication the listening skill is also very important, but it is necessary for conducting business talks and different interviews. How often we see people who can't come to the agreement because of being unable to listen! It is no sense trying to convince a person if you don't show interest. It is impossible to see another point of view if you only hear it but not listen.

Up to our mind, this basic communication skill is rather easy to learn, except the ability to be objective in all the cases. Every one of us has hidden prejudices and only really talented interviewer can confront his or her biases completely. So, the effective listening wasn't a novelty for me, but the communication training showed that it is no limits for improvement. To finish with the first skill I'll quote once more the words by ancient sages: «If I listen I have an advantage, if I speak - others have it».

Because of these all reasons in most psychological researchers, the interest for social intelligence arose, as a rule, in connection with the construction of a new conceptual apparatus for the intellectual processes of the person. At the same time, the term «social intelligence» was used more often contextually, and not in the sense of a separate subject of the research. So today, quite theoretical and experimental psychological researchers on the problem of social intelligence have been implemented. It is worth noting just that the researchers of V.A. Genkina (2000), M.A. Lukichova (2004) and S.V. Rudenko (2008) had a deal with the contemporary studies of social intelligence as a factor of the success of pedagogical activity. However, the structure of the social intelligence of the teacher still remains beyond the attention of researchers. It's necessary to pay attention to the functions of social intelligence of the specialist of pedagogical sphere of the activity, the features of the relationship of social intelligence with the personal characteristics of the teacher and also the success of pedagogical activities.

Thus, a scientific problem was identified; it was important in the theoretical and methodological terms and actual in practical ones. This problem is to build the structure of the social intelligence of the teacher and test it empirically. Further improvement of research methods that could be used to study the components and mechanisms of functioning of the teacher's social intelligence at the micro-, meso - and macro-levels is necessary. The psychological mechanisms, factors and conditions for the development of personal qualities of teachers should be distinguished and substantiated, and the use of cognitive styles by the teachers for the implementation of activities that will actualize (and to a certain extent - facilitate) the development of their social intelligence. The latter will allow to determine the influence of the success of the professional activity of teachers on the development of abilities in the structure of social intelligence.

In this article we've to show the author's conception of social intellect, to present the descriptions of cognitive, mnemonic and emphatic structures of social intellect. We'll describe and analyze empirical research of 395 teachers of schools and eight directors of these school from different regions of Ukraine (to analyze the level of their social intellect).

So, social intellect is the ability to get along well with others, and to get them to cooperate with you. Sometimes referred to simplistically as «people skills», social intellect includes an awareness of situations and the social dynamics that govern them, and knowledge of interaction styles and strategies that can help a person achieve his or her objectives in dealing with others. It also involves a certain amount of self-insight and a consciousness of one's own perceptions and reaction patterns.

The author's conception of social intellect shows us that this intellect includes cognitive, mnemonic and emphatic structures.

Based on the model of intelligence of G. Gardner (1993) and N. Cantor (Cantor & Harlow, 1994), the structure of the social intelligence of the teacher was shown (see Fig. 1). It was noted that the social intelligence of the teacher was a complex of personal entity that contained cognitive, systemic and integral structures.

teacher social intelligence

The structure of the social intelligence of the teacher

The system structures are communicative and predictive competencies, which include integral components, in particular, mechanisms of anticipation, decentralization, intellectual initiation, decision-making, planning, control and self-control, reflection, etc. At the same time, the communicative competence and the ability of the teacher that are parts of the structure of the cognitive competence of a specialist (the ability to understand and to predict the effects of human behavior, the ability to summarize logically important features and various nonverbal reactions of a person; the ability to understand the changes according to different verbal reactions of a person depending on the context of the social situation, which caused them; the ability to understand the logic of the development of the situation of interpersonal interaction, the value of the behavior of different people in these situations), are presented, first of all, at the micro-level of social intelligence, prognostic competence and empathy are on the meso-level, while the mechanisms of anticipation, decentralization, intellectual initiation, decision-making, planning, control and self-control, reflection, etc., which ensure the functioning of social intelligence, are at the macro-level.

Cognitive aspect of social intelligence involves a set of fairly stable knowledge, assessment, rules of interpretation of events, human behavior, their relationships, etc. Social intelligence is based on the existing system of interpretation on micro-structural and macro - structural levels. The microstructure of cognitive aspect of social intelligence is determined by the features of the latter, namely cognitive evaluation, which determines the competent processing and evaluating the information that the subject perceives, his/her prediction, based on planning and forecasting of interpersonal interactions, communication, providing proper performance of the process of communication (this function is associated with an adequate perception and understanding of the process of communication of the partner). It is based on the mechanism of reflection which is reflected directly in self-knowledge. In turn, the macrostructure of cognitive aspect of social intelligence manifests itself in the attitude of the person to himself/herself as a value, in the valuable semantic position in interpersonal relationships, as well as the updating of motivation and value orientation of the man with the purpose to reach axiological attitude in professional and other activities.

The source of social intelligence on micro-level is the continuous updating of functions noted by us. The results of integration can be considered a set of subjective scales which enable the subject to focus on the features of interpersonal interactions, identify and adequately evaluate the behavior of other persons. One of the main results of social intelligence is the presence of a high level of individual statistics with different modalities. They are some space of psycho-semantic subjective scales, symbols of nonverbal behavior, norms of language products, etc.

The task of social intelligence on macro-structural level is to provide opportunities to partners of social interaction to evaluate themselves and others as individuals. In this case, the value orientation of the person does not necessarily reflect generally accepted social norms and even enter in conflict with them. But there is always a particular society and its representatives, where individual vision of the world has personal values and meanings for people.

Mnemonic aspect of social intelligence of the person describes the presence of the ability to interpret events, life events, behavior of others and their own as the subject of these events. Mnemonic aspect is based on the personal experience of the subject, where subjective statistics constitute personal interpretive complex. Polimodality in this case means that a person has different interpretative systems according to various aspects of life of a man/woman. So, they may conflict with each other, but psychologically they consist of internal structures, providing based unity of mnemonic aspect and a social intelligence.

Mnemonic aspect has its own set of interpretations: I - other people - the world. Each of these levels of interpretation is represented at the level of mnemonic aspect in the form of its specific dependent substructures. The core of personal interpretations in the complex is the cumulative set of the person estimated himself/herself. This process of evaluative attitude is always subjectively unfinished, open. Analyzing the features of the interaction of the person with the society, the man can be shown as an integral characteristic of the person's experience (self-respect of the person, the concept of subjective value). Personal interpretive complex is characterized by the ability of the person to do interpretations of others, their behavior and actions. These interpretations allow their participants to expand continuously and adjust stock their interpretative personal experience, provide such kind of compatibility and similarity of different interpretational systems.

In a space of the relations of the person there is a need to evaluate constantly other people, their behavior and actions, gradually produced a different strategies estimated the criterion of compatibility of people's perception of the world and their perceptions by others. In turn, these strategies form the appropriate assessments and personal interpretive complex in the interpersonal sphere, which presents the dominant level of mnemonic component of social intelligence.

Emphatic aspect of social intelligence is largely dependent on what shape of the behavior the person chooses as a priority that he/she expects his/her business associated with the complex of interpretative value in relation to the world of the person.

Thus, we assume the main results of the integration of the functions of social intelligence are the presence of individual statistics with different modalities. The first result is a space of psycho-semantic subjective scales, symbols and principles of nonverbal behavior and different norms of speech production. A list of these modalities can be complement, implying that statistics actually reflect various aspects of life because they are so different, based on depth, length, representativeness and others. At the same time statistics can be the units of social intelligence, their structure, functions and genesis which are deep enough from one side, and so different from social stereotypes - from the other. If the stereotype is a stable structure, a fixed-level of mnemonic aspect of social intelligence, is invariant in relations to various life situations, their statistics. Statistics and stereotypes can facilitate future organization of social intelligence of each person.

From the standpoint of interpersonal skills, Karl Albrecht classifies behavior toward others as falling somewhere on a spectrum between «toxic» effect and «nourishing» effect. Toxic behavior makes people feel devalued, angry, frustrated, guilty or otherwise inadequate. Nourishing behavior makes people feel valued, respected, affirmed, encouraged or competent. A continued pattern of toxic behavior indicates a low level of social intellect - the inability to connect with people and influence them effectively. A continued pattern of nourishing behavior tends to make a person much more effective in dealing with others; nourishing behaviors are the indicators of high social intelligence.

The old idea that a person's potential in life can be measured and predicted by a single number - his or her «IQ» score - has lost a great deal of credibility during the last decade or so. Many researchers now accept Gardner's proposition that intellect is multidimensional, and many believe that each of the key dimensions of intellect can continue to increase throughout one's life, given the appropriate experiences, challenges and growth opportunities.

Social intelligence can be measured. Measuring social intelligence involves identifying key interaction skills and then assessing them behaviorally. All human interaction takes place with some context or other, and effectiveness involves mastering the contexts within which one is called upon to interact. So, according to this reasoning, social intelligence means understanding contexts, knowing how to navigate within and between various contexts, and knowing how to behave in various contexts so as to achieve one's objectives. In other words, social intelligence is inferred from behavior, so we use various observable behaviors as indicators of social intelligence.

So, social intelligence can be developed. By first understanding social intelligence, as a combination of skills expressed through learned behavior, and then assessing the impact of one's behavior on others - the degree to which one is successful in dealing with others - one can experiment with new behaviors and new interaction strategies. I the simplest terms, this is the ability to «get along with people», which - it is a assumed - people learn as they grow up, mature, and gain experience in dealing with others. Unfortunately, many people do not continue to learn and grow as they age, and many people never acquire the awareness and skills they need to succeed in social, business or professional situations. It is quite clear that adults who lack insight and competence in dealing with others can make significant improvements in their social intelligence status as a result of understanding the basic concepts and assessing themselves against a comprehensive model of interpersonal effectiveness.

According to our research, the ability to solve practical terms communicative tasks, analyze and implement appropriate feedback (for example, to provide a kind of «talented communication»), is related to paradigms of social intelligence. Therefore, the structure of social intelligence, which is obvious from our empiric results, includes distinguish the following five basic components: 1) the ability to perceive the person in the most thoroughly and adequate way (to demonstrate observation, to be ready to quick orientation in situations of social interaction, etc.); 2) the ability to understand deeply the internal properties and characteristics of the person (we mean penetration of the spirit world, intuition); 3) the ability for empathy (empathy, compassion, kindness, respect for willingness to help);

4) the ability to analyze the behavior of the other person (to reflect);

5) the ability to manage yourself and the process of subject-subject communication (to self-control).

So, we are sure, that social intelligence also includes such phenomena as communicative competence, competence in a sphere of anticipation and reflection (the latter are considered as structural components of social intellect). But this point of view must be tested in our empiric researchers, which we'll described in consequent articles.

According to the criterion of a high level of the development of social intelligence, the teacher was successfully solved by a specialist of social (including original, non-standard) tasks, as well as the achievement of success in the professional activities by the teacher.

At this stage there were participated 395 teachers of secondary schools of different regions of Ukraine and 8 directors of these schools (school №5, №15 of Rivne, Shpanivskyi school-garden of Rivne district, Kotovska secondary school of I-III degrees of Rivne district), Kvasilivska secondary school «School-Lyceum» of Rivne district, Zdolbunivka secondary school №5 of Rivne region, secondary schools №45, 96 of Odessa). At the beginning of the research, we proposed the hypotheses that the level of the development of the social intelligence of the teachers would be depended on the category (which he/she had), the discipline having been read by that teacher (to which cycle of disciplines that subject belonged), as well as the psychological type of the person and gender specifics of the teacher had been. Distribution of groups and micro-groups was done using the method of randomization (technology of pair design), which allowed us to equalize the number of men and women in each micro-group (except for these micro-groups, which included elementary school teachers, because there were no men among this category of teachers).

The first phase of the experiment was carried out during 2005. The method of the research at this stage was the observation of teachers of preschool establishments, the selection of methodical tools for empirical research. The second, empirical stage of our study was carried out during 2006-2008. The following methods were used in the research: 1) general scientific methods (analysis, comparison, generalization);

2) the psychodiagnostic method, which was provided using the test of J. Gilford and M. O'Sullivan «Research of Social Intelligence», verbal and figurative subtest «Methods of studying divergent thinking» by P. Torrens, J. Gilford (in the modification of O.E. Tunik); associative experiment (using the method of B.V. Zeygarnik «Understanding the portable value of proverbs and metaphors»; 3) mathematical and statistical methods (statistical estimations of distribution parameters, x-Pearson criterion, checking of statistical hypotheses by means of parametric t-Student's criteria and the non-parametric U-criterion Manna-Whitney, the r-Spearman correlation coefficient).

Also, to determine the psychological type of the teacher's person we used: a questionnaire by V.M. Minyarov; typographic questionnaire MBTI; personal questionnaire of CPI; a questionnaire for evaluation of personal and business professional-important qualities of the person (T. Yu. Bazarov); a questionnaire for evaluation of interpersonal admissibility (N.V. Baharev); a questionnaire for evaluation of assessing the complex of productivity in managerial situations (R. Scock); the questionnaire proposed by us for the purpose of diagnosing difficulties of interaction of teachers with other people.

It was established that the level of social intelligence of primary school teachers was quite high (from 0,68 to 0,73 points according to the results of factor analyses). Such results are explained, first of all, by the development of the communicative competence of the respondents, the ability to plan the course of professional activity and to predict their consequences and results, intellectual and personal reflection, also as well as empathy.

Teachers of the natural sciences and humanities have received results that indicate the average level of the development of social intelligence (from 0,40 to 0,51 points). The rates of women in all groups were slightly higher than of men. On the whole, the research suggests that teachers of the natural sciences and humanities have a higher level of empathy than men, and they are able to exhibit considerable flexibility in the emerging professional situations.

In all groups of men, which included teachers of the physical and mathematical subjects, as well as in the group of male directors of schools, high results of social intelligence were diagnosed according to all subtests we proposed (from 0,69 to 0,73 points), whereas the results of women of the respective groups are quite mediocre, such as men and female teachers of the disciplines of the natural sciences and humanities. High results of men who are the teachers of physics and mathematics and directors of schools are explained, first of all, by high data on communicative and prognostic competencies.

The results by the levels of the development of social intelligence of teachers indicate that the level of the development of social intelligence does not depend on the level of teachers' qualification, that is, the length of work at school, the teacher's age, etc. It has been established that the social intelligence of a teacher depends on the gender characteristics of respondents, from the subject area of their professional activity, which the teacher deals with after their graduation, as well as from the psychological type of his/her person. Thus, the highest level of social intelligence have teachers of harmonious, conformal and dominant types of the person, the lowest - infantile and disturbing. Sufficient level of the development of social intelligence (middle level and the level high than middle one) was diagnosed according to the teachers of sensitive, introverted and extroverted types of the person. The psychotype of the individual, in turn, was predetermined by the choice of the respondent in one or another sphere of the professional activity (for example, natural sciences, humanities or physics and mathematics, the profession of the teacher of primary school, etc.).

Consequently, it was proved that:

1. Social intelligence and divergent thinking of the teacher of preschool educational institutions form a unified system of the ability of the subject in understanding social situations, attitudes and interactions. Social intelligence provides the understanding of typical social meanings, divergent thinking - the understanding of «others» in individual meanings and different meanings, which allow the teacher to perceive the professional situation creatively and holistically, to understand the situations of interpersonal interaction on the basis of the enrichment of typical social meanings by the variety of his/her individual meanings.

2. Abilities of social intelligence (ability to understand typical social meanings of situations, values of nonverbal expressions, meaning of the statement according to the intonation, understanding of the situation in the dynamics) and the quality of divergent thinking of the teacher of preschool educational institutions (extrapolation of subjective representations in predicting the integral meaning of the situation, generalization of semantic units, actualization of associations, transformation of uncertain material into the existing system of representations of the subject) are interrelated functionally for the prince the complementary of teachers' mental structures in understanding the social situation of interaction.

3. It has been established that social intelligence and divergent thinking of the teacher of schools form a unified system of abilities of the subject in the understanding of social situations, attitudes and interactions. Social intelligence provides the understanding of social situations, divergent thinking - the understanding of «Other person» in individual meanings, which allow the teacher to perceive the professional situation (the situations of interpersonal interaction) creatively and holistically, based on the enrichment of typical social meanings by the variety of individual values and personal meanings.

4. It has been proved that the particularities of social intelligence of teachers of schools are largely determined by individual personal qualities, empathic abilities, semantic life orientations, psycho-types of their personality, professional achievement of a specialist. The level of the development of social intelligence of teachers is also conditioned by the gender characteristics of teachers, in particular, the gender identity of the person; social intelligence of teachers is determined by the gender motivational-behavioral characteristics, in particular, the motivation of achievement, personal orientation, affiliation, style of behavior in a conflict situation, a cognitive style of the professional activity, etc.

5. The psycholinguistic features of the development of social intelligence of the teacher were established:

- the composite assessment of the teacher's social intelligence positively correlates with the communicative and predictive competence, reflexive and empathic abilities of the person;

- the social intelligence of the teacher largely depends on the creation of positive conditions for the implementation of the activity of a specialist, his/her creative activities that would actualize the development of divergent abilities of the teacher, would allow him/her to perceive creatively and holistically in the professional situations, the situations of interpersonal interaction on the basis of enrichment of typical social meanings by the diversity of individual values and personality senses;

- the high level of the development of the social intelligence of the teacher is determined by the type of gender identity, individual personal qualities, in particular, the harmonious, conformal and dominant psycho-types of their personality, the acceptance of the nonlinear and (or) non-dependent style of their professional activity as personally significant style.

The connection between the professional achievement of the teacher and the level of his/her social intelligence was revealed.

References

1. Cantor, N., & Harlow, R. (1994). Social intelligence and personality: Flexible life task pursuit. In R.J. Sternberg & P. Ruzgis (Eds.), Personality and intelligence (pp. 137-168). New York, NY, US: Cambridge University Press.

2. Gardner, H. (1993). Multiple intelligences: the theory in practice. New York: Basic Books.

3. Genkina, VA. (2000). Razvitie socialnogo intellekta pedagoga specialnoj shkoly v professionalnoj dejatelnosti [The development of social intelligence of the teacher of a special school in professional activity]. Candidate's thesis. Chelyabinsk [in Russian].

4. Hestvik, A., Bradley, E., & Bradley, C. (2012). Working Memory Effects of Gap - Predictions in Normal Adults: An Event-Related Potentials Study. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research. 41 (6), 425-438. doi: 10.1007/s10936-011-9197-8 Lukicheva, M.A. (2004). Razvitie socialnogo intellekta studentov - budushhih uchitelej [The development of social intelligence of students - future teachers]. Candidate's thesis. Cherepovets: Cherepovets State University [in Russian]. Rudenko, S.V (2008). Socialnyj intellekt kak faktor uspeha pedagogicheskoj dejatelnosti [Social intelligence as a factor of the success of pedagogical activity]. Candidate's thesis. Kyiv: G.S. Kostyuk Institute of Psychology of NAES of Ukraine [in Ukrainian].

5. Wing Chee So, Sotaro Kita, & Goldin-Meadow, S. (2013). When Do Speakers Use Gestures to Specify Who Does What to Whom? The Role of Language Proficiency and Type of Gestures in Narratives. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 42 (6), 581-594. doi: 10.1007/s10936-012-9230-6

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