The Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Job Satisfaction of Physical Education Teachers

The purpose of the present research was to study the relationship between emotional intelligence as well as its five components and job satisfaction of physical education teachers. The research was descriptive-correlational and the population of the research consisted of all the physical education teachers of Zanjan Province in the period 2008-2009. Of the total number of 486 PE teachers, 215 teachers were randomly selected using proportional stratified sampling. Data collection materials were the standard Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire of Siberia Schernig and the Job Description Index (JDI). Descriptive and inferential (Pearson’s correlation coefficient, stepwise regression, and Fisher’s exact test) were applied for data analysis. The results showed that there is a significant positive relationship between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction ( ) and between the components of social skills, empathy, and motivation and job satisfaction at level. Further, the results of stepwise regression showed that among the five components of emotional intelligence, social skills (0.442), empathy (0.302), and motivation (0.235) were predictors of teacher’s job satisfaction. The calculated Fisher’s z revealed that the difference between the correlation between the teachers with diploma and those with MSc is significant at level. It seems that job satisfaction of teachers can be increased by training and improving their emotional intelligence along with providing facilities and satisfying their needs.