Prediction of emotional intelligence of secondary school students based on epistemological beliefs and perception of social constructivism environment

The present study was conducted to predict the emotional intelligence of secondary school students based on epistemological beliefs and perceptions of the social constructivist environment. The research method was a descriptive correlation. The statistical population included secondary school students of Babol City in the academic year 2021-2022. The sample size was 375 people who were selected by cluster random sampling method. The research tools included the Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire (EIQ) by Bradbury and Greaves (2005), the epistemological beliefs questionnaire (SEBQ) by Schommer (1990), and the perception of social constructivist environment questionnaire (PCLE) by Taylor et al. (1996). The results of the regression test showed that in addition to epistemological beliefs (P=0.003 and β=0.15), among the components of the environment of social constructivism, the components of personal communication (P=0.02 and β=0.12 ), reflective thinking (P=0.001 and β=0.36) and support (P=0.05 and β=0.10) were significant predictors of emotional intelligence, but components of classroom interaction (0.81 P = 0.01 and β = 0.01), leadership (P = 0.17 and β = 0.07) and empathy (P = 0.13 and β = 0.07) were not significant predictors for emotional intelligence. Also, the results showed that the predictor variables were able to predict 0.33 of the variance of the emotional intelligence variable. The result of the present study shows that paying attention to epistemological beliefs and perception of a social constructivist environment can help to explain emotional intelligence in students.