The first year of undergraduate education is a significant transition period. During this time, students are confronted with a variety of new academic and social challenges, which require different emotional abilities so as to support the successful transition in the first year. As such, the study aims to investigate the values of emotional intelligence in facilitating the first year experience. Specifically, a conceptual model is proposed, which postulates that emotional intelligence would have an impact on self-directed learning and student engagement, which in turn, affect the first year learning outcomes. According to Salovey and Mayer (1990), emotional intelligence encompasses the abilities of the appraisal, expression and regulation of the emotions in the self and others as well as the utilization of emotions for problem solving. Its relationship with self-directed learning can be revealed from the analysis of McCombs and Whisler (1989), who suggested that three important elements drive the occurrence of self-directed learning: (i) motivation and positive affect; (ii) self-regulation and (iii) locus of control. They are, indeed, all closely associated with emotional intelligence. Building on abundant evidence showing its relationship with academic study and positive social relationships, emotional intelligence is also expected to influence student engagement. Fredrickson’s (1998, 2001) broaden-and-build theory also lays the ground for the relationship between the two, as it proposed that the experience of positive emotions promotes exploration and approach behaviour, which, in turn, creates more learning opportunities. Individuals who are more emotionally intelligent are better at harnessing positive emotions. A mixed-method approach with two stages of data collection was employed in this study. In stage one, a total of 1760 first year students at a university in Hong Kong responded to a survey measuring emotional intelligence and self-directed learning during the registration period. In stage two, a follow-up survey gauging students’ engagement and learning outcomes was administered to all participants from stage one at the end of the first year, with 560 responses collected in total. Four focus groups with 18 first year participants with high and low levels of emotional intelligence were also used to explore how they differed in terms of their attitudes and behaviours on self-directed learning and student engagement. Structural equation modelling was performed to test the interrelationships among emotional intelligence, self-directed learning and student engagement. The findings affirmed the values of emotional intelligence in influencing self-directed learning and student engagement, which were found to be significantly linked with student learning outcomes. As a whole, the model proposed was able to explain 14% of the variance of GPA and 34% to 40% of the variance of the cognitive, social and self-growth outcomes. The study not only unveils the interrelationships among emotional intelligence, self-directed learning and student engagement, but more importantly, it sheds light on how best to improve the quality of the first year undergraduate education as the findings suggest that the enhancement of emotional intelligence, self-directed learning and student engagement can have direct or indirect effects to desirable learning outcomes. / published_or_final_version / Education / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Psychology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

Wong, Chiu Wing. / Thesis (Ed.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2011. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 336-358). / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstract also in Chinese.