Emotional intelligence and decision-making in multicultural foreign language education: Ukrainian and English contexts
Keywords:
Emotional intelligence, ethical decision-making, multicultural education, Ukrainian as a foreign language, English as a foreign language, linguistic identity, emotional-cognitive competence, psycholinguistics, intercultural empathy, value-based pedagogy, emotional literacy, resilience in communication, human-centered linguodidactics, postcolonial educationSynopsis
This study examines the relationship between emotional intelligence (EI) and ethical decision-making in foreign-language teaching under conditions of prolonged social and wartime crisis in Ukraine (the Russia-Ukraine war). The analysis draws on quantitative and qualitative data collected in 2023–2024 across higher-education institutions in several Ukrainian regions, involving philology students and faculty. The study aimed to clarify how emotional self-awareness, self-regulation, and empathy contributed to ethical judgement in multilingual educational settings. The findings indicate a stable association that has been observed in both students and teachers, between EI level and the character of ethical decisions in language learning and teaching. The findings also reveal that moral reasoning in language pedagogy is not formed solely through normative guidance; rather, it develops primarily through its interaction with learners’ and teachers’ cognitive-emotional competence. Qualitative evidence further showed that cognitive-emotional resilience, ethical empathy, and linguistic integrity operated not as abstract values but as everyday pedagogical practices, both within and beyond the classroom. In wartime, routine linguistic actions, from how meaning is formulated and how error correction is delivered to how and which interpretation is selected, acquire explicit ethical weight and become tied to the maintenance of human dignity, truthfulness, and mutual respect. A specific contribution of the work lies in its articulation of the ethical distinction between multiculturalism and polyculturalism in the contemporary Ukrainian context. Educational practices associated with Ukrainian and English as a mother tongue or a foreign language correspond to a multicultural model grounded in coexistence and reciprocal respect, whereas the linguistic paradigm associated with Russian displays assimilationist and hierarchical features and correlates with broader practices of cultural and linguistic displacement; remarkably, it is far beyond Ukrainian language and culture, it is also observed that it affects other languages and cultures within the Russian Federation itself. The conclusion underscores that EI, ethical decision-making, and language pedagogy form an integrated foundation of contemporary multicultural education, and that foreign-language teaching today should be understood more than pedagogical activity; it is an ethically motivated practice directed at preserving cultural agency and emotional resilience, especially under conditions of systemic instability.
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August 1, 2026
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Copyright (c) 2026 Oksana Chaika, Natalia Berezovska-Savchuk, Oksana Hutyriak
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Chaika, O., Berezovska-Savchuk, N., & Hutyriak, O. (2026). Emotional intelligence and decision-making in multicultural foreign language education: Ukrainian and English contexts. In In Press. Adapting education to modern realities. Scientific Route OÜ®. https://monograph.route.ee/rout/catalog/book/260/chapter/212
