Need of Social Intelligence for Future Teachers

Abstract

This paper makes an attempt to put forward the need of social intelligence for future teachers. Human resource is the new capital in a developing country like India. The workforce is no more in demand of people with high IQ or university rank holders, all they need is people who can have good communication and interpersonal skills and who are socially intelligent to navigate in the complex multifaceted, divergent social and cultural work environment with ease and effectiveness that facilitates and results in productive workforce.
The paradigm shift from isolated individual centric intelligence has given rise to community centred and people centred intelligence called Social intelligence propounded by Thorndike in 1920. According to Sean Foleno, social intelligence is a persons competence to optimally understand one's environment and react appropriately for socially successful conduct. Social intelligence is the need of the hour in every work environment due to the multicultural and divergent workforce. The need for social intelligence is relatively high for future teachers who have the challenge of facing and handling multilingual and culturally diversified classrooms, the most successful teacher will be the one who is socially smart and intelligent to meet the needs of global classrooms. The social neuroscience research has made it clear that the social and emotional environment of the classroom can be set to a greater extent by its teachers, which facilitates better brain states for student learning.
Effective teachers in the future will need to deal with an environment of incessant transformation in which interaction with pupils and other workforces of the education system will become more pervasive and predominant. According to Goleman (1995) our emotions and social skills can be effective in determining success. Goleman (1995) stated, People who are empathic attend more to the subtle social signals that indicate what others need or want. This makes them suitable for careers like teaching, medicine, sales and management. Teachers need to possess a basic understanding of students and skills for interacting effectively with them. They need to modify their pattern of social skills. This requires the teachers to be socially intelligent. Social intelligence as a sophisticated ability is important in teaching and learning process and to the future teachers who are the architects of our democratic nation.