The research, published in the journal Discover Social Science and Health, was conducted by Gideon Tetteh Agormedah, Edmond Kwesi Agormedah, and Samuel Kwarteng of the Department of Business and Social Sciences Education. The team set out to determine whether emotional intelligence, often abbreviated as EI, predicts the level of teaching anxiety experienced by preservice business teachers during their practicum, and whether gender changes the strength of that relationship. Their findings point to a clear conclusion: emotional intelligence does influence teaching anxiety, and the effect holds regardless of whether the trainee is a man or a woman.

To understand why this matters, it helps to unpack the theoretical scaffolding the researchers chose. The study is grounded in the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping, a framework originally developed by psychologists Richard Lazarus and Susan Folkman in the 1980s. The model holds that stress is not simply a property of demanding situations, nor purely a feature of individual temperament. Instead, stress emerges from a transaction between the person and the environment: first, the individual appraises whether a situation threatens their well-being, and second, they appraise what resources they have to cope with it. A practicum classroom can therefore be read by one trainee as an intolerable threat and by another as a challenging but manageable task, depending on the cognitive and emotional resources each brings to the encounter.

Emotional intelligence fits into this model as exactly such a resource. Broadly, EI refers to the capacity to perceive, understand, regulate, and use emotions, both one’s own and those of other people. A trainee teacher high in EI can recognize the physical signs of their own rising panic, reframe a hostile-looking classroom as a normal feature of adolescent behavior, and modulate their emotional response before it spirals into full anxiety. A trainee low in EI, by contrast, may experience the same classroom events as an escalating series of threats with no obvious coping route. In transactional terms, EI shapes the secondary appraisal, the assessment of coping resources, and thereby determines how much stress the practicum ultimately produces.

The researchers tested this logic with an explanatory correlational cross-sectional design. Rather than sampling a subset of the population, they used a census approach, enrolling all 107 preservice business teachers available to the study, a group preparing to teach accounting and management subjects. Data were collected through a closed-ended structured questionnaire, a format that allows respondents to rate their emotional intelligence and their teaching anxiety on fixed scales and permits statistical comparison across the whole group. Because every member of the population was included, the study avoids the sampling bias that can creep in when only volunteers or easily reachable students participate.

The analysis proceeded in two statistical stages. First, the team used linear regression to test whether emotional intelligence scores predicted teaching anxiety levels during the practicum. Regression analysis estimates the direction and strength of the relationship between a predictor variable and an outcome, allowing researchers to ask whether higher EI is systematically associated with lower anxiety. Second, and more subtly, the researchers employed the PROCESS moderation procedure developed by statistician Andrew Hayes, a widely used tool for testing whether a third variable changes the strength or direction of a relationship between two others. Here, the third variable was gender. The question was not whether men and women differ in anxiety on average, but whether the protective effect of emotional intelligence operates differently for each gender.

The results answered both questions. Emotional intelligence did significantly influence the level of teaching anxiety reported by the preservice business teachers, consistent with the transactional prediction that stronger emotional coping resources should buffer the stress of the practicum. Yet the moderation analysis returned a null result: gender did not moderate the relationship. In other words, the anxiety-reducing benefit of emotional intelligence appears to operate similarly for male and female trainees. This finding is notable because much of the literature on teaching anxiety has documented gender differences in self-reported anxiety, and one might have expected the coping mechanism to work differently across genders. The Cape Coast data suggest that the underlying psychological machinery is shared.

There are technical caveats worth keeping in view. A cross-sectional design captures a single moment in time, so it can establish that EI and anxiety are related as theory predicts, but it cannot prove that emotional intelligence causes lower anxiety; it is at least conceivable that less anxious trainees find it easier to report high emotional competence. The modest sample of 107 participants, while a complete census of its population, is small by the standards of moderation analysis, and null moderation findings can sometimes reflect limited statistical power rather than a true absence of effect. Self-report questionnaires, meanwhile, depend on respondents’ willingness and ability to describe their own emotional lives accurately. None of these limitations undermines the study’s core contribution, but they mark the boundaries within which its conclusions should be read.

The practical implications, however, reach well beyond the statistical tables. Teacher education programs in many countries devote extensive time to subject-matter knowledge and pedagogical technique, while treating the emotional demands of teaching as something trainees will simply absorb through experience. The Ghanaian researchers argue that this passive approach should change. Their central recommendation is that stakeholders in teacher education be intentional about incorporating structured emotional intelligence development into the preparation of future business teachers, so that trainees enter the practicum equipped to manage the emotional pressures it generates. Structured EI development can take many forms, from explicit instruction in emotion recognition and regulation to supervised reflection on stressful classroom episodes, role-play exercises, and peer-support structures that normalize anxiety rather than stigmatize it.

The focus on business teachers is itself significant. Preservice accounting and management teachers occupy a distinctive niche: they must translate technical, often abstract content into engaging lessons while managing classrooms that may regard their subject as dry or intimidating. That combination of content-delivery pressure and classroom-management demand makes the practicum an especially potent stressor for this group, and it makes the finding that EI buffers their anxiety particularly actionable. If emotional competence can be built before trainees ever face their first class, the practicum could shift from a trial by fire into a genuinely formative experience.

More broadly, the study adds to a growing body of evidence that the emotional dimension of teaching is not a soft afterthought but a core professional competency. The Transactional Model of Stress and Coping reminds us that the same classroom can be experienced as threat or challenge depending on the appraisals a teacher brings to it, and emotional intelligence is one of the few trainable resources that shapes those appraisals directly. The Cape Coast team’s finding that this resource works across genders simplifies the intervention problem: teacher educators do not need gender-specific emotional training tracks, only well-designed programs that raise EI for everyone. As education systems worldwide grapple with teacher attrition and burnout, evidence that a trainable psychological skill can reduce the anxiety of the very first teaching experience offers a promising, and refreshingly practical, point of intervention. The study, published open access with a permanent DOI, invites teacher educators everywhere to ask whether their programs are teaching the emotional curriculum as seriously as the academic one.

Subject of Research: The relationship between emotional intelligence and teaching practicum anxiety among preservice business teachers

Article Title: Emotional intelligence and teaching practicum anxiety in preservice business teachers across gender differences

Article References: Agormedah, G. T., Agormedah, E. K., & Kwarteng, S. (2026). Emotional intelligence and teaching practicum anxiety in preservice business teachers across gender differences. Discover Social Science and Health. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44155-026-00472-w

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44155-026-00472-w

Keywords: emotional intelligence, teaching anxiety, teaching practicum, preservice teachers, business education, teacher education, stress and coping, Transactional Model of Stress and Coping, gender differences, Ghana, moderation analysis, teacher training

Dr. Katie Matt, Assistant Professor of Accounting, and Dr. Lisa Berardino, Associate Professor of Management, co-authored a peer-reviewed study titled “An Integrated Approach to Developing Students’ Ethical Values for Accounting Fraud Prevention: Aligning Course Learning Objectives with the Elements of Fraud,” published in the Business Education Innovation Journal. Their research confronts a persistent shortcoming in business education: the tendency to treat ethics as a standalone requirement, often delivered in a single isolated course, rather than as a thread woven through every stage of a student’s professional formation. The authors contend that this fragmented approach leaves graduates ill-equipped to recognize and resist the pressures that give rise to fraudulent conduct in real organizational settings.

At the analytical heart of the study lies the Fraud Triangle, one of the most widely used frameworks in accounting research and practice for understanding why fraud occurs. Developed from the work of criminologist Donald Cressey, the model identifies three conditions that typically converge when an individual commits occupational fraud: pressure, opportunity, and rationalization. Pressure refers to the financial or personal stresses that motivate someone to act, such as debt, unrealistic performance targets, or lifestyle expectations. Opportunity describes the perceived ability to carry out and conceal the act, often stemming from weak internal controls or excessive trust placed in a single employee. Rationalization is the psychological process by which the individual justifies the behavior to themselves, convincing themselves that the act is temporary, deserved, harmless, or somehow different from true dishonesty.

Matt and Berardino use this tripartite framework not merely to explain fraud after the fact, but as a design blueprint for curriculum development. Their central proposal is that every element of the Fraud Triangle can be addressed through carefully constructed learning objectives embedded across multiple courses. A student’s understanding of pressure can be deepened in courses on organizational behavior and human resource management, where topics such as performance evaluation systems, workplace stress, and incentive structures illuminate how organizations inadvertently cultivate the very stresses that push employees toward misconduct. Opportunity can be examined in accounting and auditing courses through the study of internal controls, segregation of duties, and the systemic vulnerabilities that arise when oversight is weak. Rationalization, perhaps the most psychologically complex element, can be explored through the humanities and strategic management, where students grapple with ethical reasoning, moral disengagement, and the organizational cultures that normalize questionable behavior.

The practical mechanism for achieving this integration, according to the authors, is curriculum mapping, a systematic process by which faculty chart the learning objectives of each course in a program and identify where ethical themes can be introduced, reinforced, and assessed. Rather than relying on a single business ethics course to carry the full moral weight of a student’s education, the integrated model distributes that responsibility across accounting, strategic management, organizational behavior, human resource management, and humanities offerings. In doing so, students encounter ethical questions repeatedly, in varying contexts, and from multiple disciplinary perspectives, mirroring the way ethical dilemmas actually present themselves in professional life, where they rarely arrive neatly labeled or confined to a single domain of knowledge.

The specific learning objectives proposed in the study are grounded in observable, assessable outcomes. Students should be able to evaluate real-world fraud cases, drawing lessons from the documented failures of organizations and the individuals within them. They should be able to recognize common fraud risk indicators, from unusual journal entries and lifestyle changes to reluctance to take vacation leave and overriding of established controls. They should understand how workplace culture shapes decision making, recognizing that an environment tolerating small ethical lapses is far more likely to tolerate large ones. And they should be alert to how emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence, may create entirely new categories of fraud risk, as automated systems, synthetic data, and machine-generated content open novel avenues for deception that traditional controls were never designed to catch.

The emphasis on emerging technology reflects a broader recognition that the fraud landscape is evolving faster than conventional educational approaches. Artificial intelligence tools can now be used to fabricate documents, simulate legitimate transactions, and generate convincing communications at a scale and sophistication that raise the stakes for ethical awareness. The authors’ argument implies that future accounting and business professionals will need not only technical competence with these tools but also the ethical grounding to anticipate their misuse and to question outputs that seem too convenient, too favorable, or too good to scrutinize. Integrating such discussions across the curriculum ensures that technological literacy and ethical judgment develop together rather than in isolation.

The research also speaks to a long-standing debate in professional accounting education. Accrediting bodies and professional organizations, including those that shape the certification pathways for certified public accountants and internal auditors, have repeatedly emphasized the importance of professional skepticism and integrity. Yet studies of business school graduates have frequently found that ethical development does not reliably follow from a single course, particularly one taken early in a program and disconnected from technical coursework. By contrast, an integrated approach creates repeated opportunities for students to practice ethical decision making under increasingly realistic conditions, gradually building what the authors describe as the values and professional integrity needed to navigate difficult workplace situations throughout an entire career, not merely to pass an exam.

The interdisciplinary character of the proposal is equally significant. By involving faculty from management, human resources, strategy, and the humanities in fraud prevention education, the model acknowledges that fraud is not solely an accounting problem. It is a human and organizational problem, shaped by culture, leadership, incentives, and individual psychology. A student who has examined fraud through the lenses of organizational behavior and ethical philosophy, as well as through the technical mechanics of financial reporting, emerges with a richer and more durable set of defenses against it. In an era when the costs of corporate misconduct, both financial and reputational, continue to climb, Matt and Berardino’s work offers business schools a concrete, actionable framework for producing graduates who are not only technically proficient but ethically prepared to recognize fraud risks, resist rationalization, and make principled decisions when it matters most.

Subject of Research: The role of integrated ethics education in preventing accounting fraud among business students

Article Title: College of Business faculty explore role of ethics education in accounting fraud prevention

Article References: College of Business faculty explore role of ethics education in accounting fraud prevention. (n.d.). Original publication

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: Not provided

Keywords: accounting fraud, ethics education, Fraud Triangle, business curriculum, professional integrity, curriculum mapping, organizational culture, rationalization, artificial intelligence, fraud prevention, SUNY Polytechnic Institute, business education