This paper reports on an exploration of my personal journey in childhood and the different schools I attended and what inspired me to pursue a doctorate degree in Australia. The paper is presented in three main sections. The first section describes the journey and the disrupted education I experienced at various schools in Chile. The second part titled “perseverance” talks about my studies at university and the various experiences working in schools. Finally, the last section called “self-awareness” describes my journey from teacher to researcher and the reasons why decided to become a researcher. These three sections take the reader on a journey of exploring effort, resilience and experiences in the life of a person who struggled and learnt from challenging circumstances.

The paper follows research and a link to Emotional Intelligence (EI) as a strong ‘enabler’ to cope with life’s challenges. This theory has become well known since authors such as Goleman (1998), Bar-On (2006) and Salovey and Mayer (1990) spent their careers developing and documenting the impact of EI in a person’s life. This paper uses an autoethnographic methodology documenting the life experiences of a child in the different schooling settings existing in Chile. The paper describes events from many sources of data that highlight experiences and challenges in primary and secondary education. It then moves to describe the challenges of a teacher in Chilean classrooms as well as the opportunities and rewards granted due to perseverance and effort. Finally, this paper reflects on past experiences and adversity in the face of frustration and how emotional skills support a journey of growth.

This study seeks to provoke and explore the following main research question: What are the insights and motivations of the role of EI in teacher education? My own experiences become the research backdrop and data that capture childhood, teaching and professional development courses, all that weave a narrative to shed light on how and if EI skills are explicitly taught?

Highlighted in this piece of writing is a reflection about the importance of a teacher in the life of a child. Several questions emerged from the data and detailed thematic analysis. These included; “what emotional skills and strategies do teachers need for today’s classrooms?Are they explicitly taught in pre-service teacher education? Should such skills and strategies be categorised or defined as ‘emotional’ competencies or intelligence?Do we prepare pre-service teachers with practical skills for this teaching, and do pre-service teachers have the opportunity to explore emotional intelligence in various core studies during their teacher education and qualification?

In this study, autoethnographic method is used. According to Ellis and Adams (2014), autoethnography is written by an author to retroactively describe past experiences (p. 595). This method was the best to use as it reconstructs and reflects on the journey of a Chilean teacher through her childhood memories, pre-service teacher experience and professional journey. As a researcher I explored and interrogated my memories, my personal past experiences and included a cultural lens. Autoethnography involves “research questions pertaining to one's own professional practice or personal experience that clearly require the researcher to study themselves” (Tenni, Smyth, & Boucher, 2003 p. 2). I followed several steps to collect and analyse the data in this paper. I first collected photos of myself at different stages, which represented me as a child, adult, partner and mother. I interviewed family members to match the year and date accurately, also recorded from these interviews a description of events on the photos used. Information from newspapers, photographs and interviews with ex-classmates were also gathered. These data sets were transcribed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006). The intention of this autoethnography is to highlight an emotional journey and both the motivations and inspiration underlying my pursuit on researching the importance of EI with pre-service teachers. As Denzin (2014) emphasises, writers must keep the focus on the significance of the words chosen, for successfully describing their inspirations of life. Autoethnography is also presented in this paper as the form of an autobiographical process of thinking which draws upon personal narrative and the exploration of the author’s experience of life (Mallet, 2011). This research describes personal lived experiences (Morse, 1994; Van Manen, 2006) using autoethnography (Heewon, 2008). Autoethnography as a genre can be best describe a research method that links the personal experiences with cultural aspects, placing oneself in the centre of a social context (Reed-Danahay, 1997). In this study, I explore and interrogate a possible list of emotions and skills that I believe assisted me to become a teacher then researcher.

This paper reveals understandings on the impact that a teacher can have in the life of a child. The past experiences helped me to uncover and present a strong awareness of emotions and a repertoire of emotional skills that led to build a positive attitude towards every challenge I faced in my life. This paper also reflects on the work of Dweck (2010) that having a growth mindset and understanding that intelligence is not fixed, but more importantly malleable, can be a criterion for both academic and personal success. This paper also narrates that the methodology and data collected created a journey of self-awakening, one in which my own identity was both interrogated and revealed. I discovered and reflected on my innate ability to learn and my passion for teaching. This paper that has also been accepted for publication, made me feel empowered to re-tell my past experiences as I acknowledged every positive and negative memory of my childhood. The journey and subsequent rigorous process of an autoethnography revealed an agentive voice I believe I did not have before (Ellis, Adams & Bochner, 2011). This paper, whilst very personal allowed deep reflection of the roles of mother, teacher and researcher I have taken on in this lifetime. This type of research can become a very important testimonial offering possible insights for all who have struggled when learning or are struggling whilst learning even at this moment.

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