The article aims at defining the expression of prospective teachers’ emotional competences and their readiness to develop pupils’ emotional competence, emphasising the necessity to reflect about one’s emotions under conditions of increasing tension. Having discussed the constructs of emotional intelligence, emotional competence and social competence, the attention is focussed on teacher’s emotional intelligence competence, its structure and content, aiming to research the expression of this competence empirically while students communicate with learners during their pedagogical practice.

According to scientists (Alcaraz-Muñoz et al., 2017), the development of teachers’ emotional intelligence can help teachers gain necessary skills to improve the process of education for students and thus the well-being of teachers. As there is a high level of emotions in the classes of physical education, there must be paid much more attention to it during these lessons, because not paying attention to emotional impact can cause harm. Therefore, this research was aimed to reveal the experience of physical education teachers (experts) working in Lithuania through the prism of emotional intelligence in order to get a better understanding of what role it plays in the school context, and also in the process of physical education. Research object: emotional intelligence in the process of physical education. Research aim was to reveal the importance of teachers’ (experts’) emotional intelligence in the process of physical education. Research methods: analysis of scientific literature, qualitative research: thematic analysis (Braun, Clarke, 2006). Research participants. 4 teachers (experts) from Vilnius and Kaunas cities. Results. Three topics emerged during the research: emotions experienced by teachers, emotions experienced by students and the role of emotions in education. These three themes have evolved into the sub-themes, the most significant of which were the management of teacher emotions, the adaptation of teachers to the pupils’ needs and necessity of emotions in the educational process. Conclusions. This research revealed the most common emotions experienced by teachers in the process of education, of which negative one’s teachers tend to control in order that pupils would not be adversely affected.[...]