In your feature on emotional intelligence (EI) in schools (“How are you feeling?” 27 April), Robin Banerjee and Guy Claxton are right to imply that, if used mechanistically and for outcomes-driven purposes, the subtle ethos EI is seeking to develop will be lost. But missing from the feature was any reference to teachers’ personal development. Children learn much about their emotional lives from adult role models; so the best way to bring a mature emotional ethos into schools would be to build a personal development component into all teacher training.

Richard House, Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, University of Roehampton.