Emotional Intelligence – How do we Motivate our students?

As emotions influence learning, the role of a teacher as a facilitator is very important. This paper aims to address a series of issues related to motivating students, by taking into account feelings, relationships and learning styles. The research is mainly descriptive, with examples from my teaching activities in business higher education. By being based especially on observation of classroom activities and behaviour of participants, the study is not meant to prove a particular cause and effect relationship, but rather to highlight a series of links, key questions that appear and methods that generally have better results. As expected, use of emotional intelligence leads to many advantages for the whole educational process. There are also some disadvantages related to the efforts to be put, especially in terms of use of time. However, I strongly believe that a student-centred approach and a better communication with students represent a fundamental key to success in the process of knowledge transfer.