The comparison of moral intelligence, emotional intelligence and social intelligence between students of multi-grade and one-grade classes

Multi-grade classes, in which a teacher is responsible for teaching students in different educational levels, is a way to make rural children more accessible to education. Despite the negative effects of this type of education, such as less attention to the individual needs of learners, few researches point to the increase of learners' social skills, richer educational environment, better social participation and growth of self-esteem. One of the fields to resolve this contradiction is the comparison of multiple intelligences in multi-grade and one-grade students, but there is a research gap in the relevant research background. There are different views on multi-grade classes. Some researches consider multi-grade classes as one of the problems of the educational system that must be eliminated, and some others consider the existence of these classes as an opportunity for optimal education. The results of previous studies on the benefits and limitations of multi-grade classes for students are contradictory. One of the areas to resolve this contradiction is the comparison of multiple intelligences in multi- grade and one-grade students, about which there is a research gap.

The present study was conducted with the aim of comparing moral intelligence, emotional intelligence and social intelligence in students of one-grade and multi-grade classes.

The design of the current research was a causal-comparative description. The statistical population of the research included all one-grade and multi-grade students of Khodaafrin city in the academic year of 2021-2022, who were studying in the sixth grade. The sample size was determined based on Morgan's table (239 people) and then sampling was done in three levels: cluster, class and simple random. In this way, to determine a sample of single-grade students from among the one-gradm schools of Khoda Afarin city, a few schools were randomly selected. Also, some schools were randomly selected from the multi-grade rural schools. Then, according to the size of each class (one-grade and multi-grade) in the statistical population, a total of 239 students (147 one-grade students and 92 multi-grade students) were selected randomly. In order to collect data, questionnaires of emotional intelligence (Schutte et al., 1998), moral intelligence (Lennick & Kiel, 2005) and Tromsoe social intelligence (Silvera et al., 2001) were used. Multivariate analysis of variance and SPSS26 software were used for data analysis.

The results showed that the students of multi-grade classes have obtained higher average grades in all three variables of emotional intelligence, moral intelligence and social intelligence, but this difference was not significant in terms of moral intelligence scores (P>0.05), but significant in emotional intelligence and social intelligence. was (P<0.05).

According to the findings, it seems that the students of multi-grade classes have higher emotional and social intelligence than the students of one-grade classes due to more and richer interactions in the educational environment. Considering conducting research in a specific geographical area and sixth grade students, it is suggested to repeat the experiment in other groups and more samples