Does emotional intelligence predict student teachers' performance?

•Emotional intelligence explored as contributor to preservice teaching performance.•Gender and prior academic attainment also explored.•No positive association between variables and teaching performance was found.•Implications for our understanding of emotions and teaching.

There are good theoretical grounds for seeing emotional intelligence (EI) as important in the teachers' skill set. Yet there is a lack of data on whether student teachers' levels of EI are associated with their teaching performance. This question was addressed, with gender and prior academic attainment also being explored as possible contributors to teaching performance. No association between the three independent variables and teaching performance was found. This raises serious questions for our understanding of emotions and teaching.