Predicting children's academic achievement through emotional intelligence

Abstract

Emotions should not be ignored and it is fundamental in life to know how to react appropriately to them. This reality, which has traditionally been considered as an element that could make people weaker, becomes a very important weapon with which to face life successfully. For this reason, this work has as main objective to analyze the predictors of emotional intelligence (EI) and academic achievement, according to age, gender, culture, and socioeconomic status, as well as the possible relationships between all the variables for a multicultural children sample. To make it possible, we focused on 764 participants from seven educational centers; 74.2% of the total were Muslims and 25.8% were Christians; 53.2% were males and 46.8% females. The techniques used in this survey were an ad hoc EI questionnaire and the students' grades. The results reflect that the predictors of EI were age, status, and gender. Academic achievement was predicted by culture, age, and status. A strong and directly proportional relationship between EI and academic achievement was found. Each one acts as the main predictor of the other.