What is the relationship between emotional intelligence and educational leadership?
Mustafa Toprak, associate professor of educational administration and policy in the Department of Educational Studies, has studied the link between emotion and cognition, specifically how school administrators with emotional competencies are more likely to generate positive attitudes and behavior.
“School administrators who are well aware of their emotions and those of others, who can regulate their own and others’ emotions through active and empathetic listening, and who can cultivate positive relationships with others can help teachers reframe their negative emotions in difficult times and build their ability to rebound from adversity," Toprak said.
Emotional intelligence helps educational leaders and teachers improve their positive affectivity and thereby increases their affective well-being. Toprak’s research, which has involved surveying school administrators and teachers about their workplace experience, shows that teachers' emotional intelligence significantly reduces stress, anxiety, burnout, and psychosomatic complaints, including heart disease, back pain, headaches, gastrointestinal disturbances (physical), loss of concentration, and poor decision-making (mental).
When asked why he would advise school administrators to apply his research in their daily work, Toprak noted, “School administrators feel pressure from various sources inside and outside schools. I recommend that they take care of themselves first. They should know their emotionality well by regularly engaging in a meta-emotion (thinking about emotions) practice, which requires stepping out of the moment and asking: “What is my emotion now?” and “Is this emotion helpful for my interactions with the individuals I work with?”. Donald Schön’s terms reflection-in-action and reflection-on-action are relevant and helpful for school administrators. School administrators who reflect on their emotional state during an interaction (reflection-in-action) and after an interaction (reflection-on-action) are more likely to adjust their negative emotions and transform them into positive ones. As my research shows, this practice improves the well-being of administrators and increases their capacity to create a positive work experience.”
“Compassion, kindness, and forgiveness are other essential qualities for school administrators who want to develop a positive school climate in which people are innovative and risk-taking," Toprak continued.
The evidence-based practice of emotionality also has implications for teachers. Just like a school administrator’s emotional state and well-being set the emotional tone of the school, a teacher’s emotional state and well-being largely set the emotional tone of a classroom.
“Students with an emotionally inept teacher may have trouble understanding and regulating their emotions because of the absence of an adult who can model the display of positive emotions under stress,” Toprak explained. “A teacher who has difficulty managing anger, who projects negative emotions, who is not empathetic, and who prefers to talk and dictate than listen is likely to create a classroom environment characterized by negativity and toxicity that is detrimental to students’ motivation to learn.”
Understanding the demands of emotional intelligence, building a knowledge base, and training are a few of Toprak’s recommendations for school administrators and teachers who seek to improve their emotional well-being.
“Start by reading,” he advised. “Self-motivation is a significant ingredient of emotional intelligence. I recommend reading Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ and Primal Leadership: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence.”
Toprak has authored numerous publications on emotions and educational leadership and is already making an impact by providing a model for school leadership. In “Managing Emotions in Schools: Insights from Religion Sources and a Model for School Leadership”, a chapter he co-authored in the book titled Islamic-based Educational Leadership, Administration, and Management: Challenging Expectations through Global Critical Insights, he provides the details of this model and highlights the connection between culture and emotion management, demonstrating how culture influences the way educational leaders and teachers display and suppress their emotions.
A warm welcome to all our new faculty! With research interests from international policy to visual storytelling, we are thrilled to have incoming faculty this fall who are experts in a range of disciplines. Read more about the wide array of knowledge they bring to AUC, and enjoy hearing a few fun facts – they may surprise you!
Find out a fun fact about each of our new faculty members for Fall 2023 who are experts in a range of disciplines spanning different academic schools.
Assistant Professor
Department of Political Science
"I think it's important for professors and students to have a good rapport. So, I try to keep it very cheerful and as fun as possible."
Research Interests: I work on the political economy of the Middle East, with a focus on global North-South relations. I look at some of the ways in which international finance and Western aid, in particular, influenced domestic political economies, as well as the consequences of that money on things like inequality and the perpetuation of poverty traps.
Assistant Professor
Department of Construction Engineering
"I think I have the balance between being a hard worker and a social butterfly. I love participating in both worlds."
Research Interests: My master's work was in structural engineering, consisting of finite element modeling and the use of experimental and numerical modeling to map complex structural elements. For my PhD, I shifted to city-scale modeling, focusing on using data-driven approaches and machine learning techniques to enhance the resilience of our cities in the face of climate-induced disasters.
Associate Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
"One day, I hope that when I come to work, the car will drive itself. I wouldn't have to drive everywhere I go."
Research Interests: I work mainly in two areas: First, in cybersecurity, focusing mainly on privacy awareness. Privacy is an important element of cybersecurity globally, and there is a growing understanding of the challenges in this area. My second focal point is autonomous vehicles, which is something we're continuously working toward.
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology, Egyptology and Anthropology
"Everyone loves to eat and to talk about food. It's something that we all share."
Research Interests: I look at what people ate and how they prepared food during different time periods. I love studying and researching the history of food in Egypt. Whenever I tell anyone I study food, they are very interested in what ancient Egyptians ate, but there's so much more to discover about Egyptian food history!
Interim Dean
School of Continuing Education
"I want to reach more and more people, both in Egypt and beyond."
Research Interests: I'm joining the School of Continuing Education at a very important time, as it is celebrating its 100th year in 2024. Therefore, one of my main goals is to capitalize on the legacy, history and the reputation of SCE to expand its programs. I want to bring SCE’s services to the community and foster the ability to reach more and more people, both in Egypt and beyond.
Assistant Professor
Department of Public Policy and Administration
"I am looking forward to exploring all the ancient spaces of beautiful Egypt."
Research Interests: I work on climate change and energy issues, and I study how international institutions and interests interact with policy processes at the national level. I am primarily interested in the influence of international actors and interests on domestic policies and policy debates.
Associate Professor of Practice
Department of Arts
"Usually when I enter my class, I want to break the ice as fast as possible."
Research Interests: I'm really interested in visual archives. I have already begun building an archive here of pictures taken on the streets of Cairo. I also have a project with students and alumni from my previous university, where we focus on building archives and communicating them again in a different way via workshops.
Associate Professor
Department of Applied Linguistics
“Welcome aboard! I hope you have a stress-free course."
Research Interests: My research area includes a range of subjects within linguistics. For example, I work with sociolinguistics and discourse analysis. Sometimes, I work with cognitive linguistics, which is primarily related to how we learn language as kids and adults.
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science and Engineering
“My lifelong dream was to become an astronaut because I was interested in space and math and so on. Then I realized that I'm actually interested in exploration, so I ended up becoming a researcher and professor.”
Research Interests:
My research is about character computing, which is an extension of effective computing. This aims to merge psychology and computer science in order to model human behavior based on different situations and build adaptive applications. I am also interested in privacy and security, as well as utilizing machine learning and ethical AI so that people can be more aware while dealing with data.
Psychology and computer science are seemingly different fields. However, I'm very interested in combining different disciplines because in the end, computer science is a tool that can be applied in any domain. My interest during and after my PhD was to see how you can actually understand human behavior more by building computer simulations and adjusting the computer algorithms in order to understand people as individuals and treat all of them distinctly.
Professor
Department of Sociology, Egyptology and Anthropology
"It's always an adventure to work on an excavation."
Research Interests: I do archaeological research in Dayr al Barsha, which is a cemetery site from the Old Kingdom to the Middle Kingdom located in Minya governorate. I also study the history of Egyptology and how the discipline has evolved over the last 200 years, with a focus on how it developed in Belgium particularly.
During excavations, you're there with a big team of people from all nationalities and specialties who contribute to the knowledge of the site. We always find incredible things, sometimes very unexpected things. We once found the meter stick of an American archaeologist who was working at the site in 1915. He just left it behind. We also found an intact tomb several years ago, with a coffin, mummy and two models preserved as if they were made yesterday. It’s always an adventure to work on an excavation.
Associate Professor of Practice
Department of the Arts
“Each project is a journey, like pulling a thread. You keep pulling it until you reach something, but not the end. There’s never an end.”
Research Interests: I have been a practicing artist for around 20 years. I'm a visual artist in an expanded sense; I'm not really tied to one medium. I create mixed media installations, and I perform. I also create films, both experimental documentaries and docufiction. I keep myself entertained. Right now, I’m working on my first feature-length film. It's a docufiction that’s going to take me a couple more years to finish.
My work is often inspired by the mundane and daily life, drawing inspiration from things that I experience on a daily basis. I try to push them further and investigate their significance in a larger sociopolitical sense. I don't really think of a particular project as a special project. Each project is a journey, like pulling a thread. You keep pulling it until you reach something, but not the end. There’s never an end.
