Global Trait Emotional Intelligence Predicts Psychological Safety in Multilingual and Multicultural Schools: Scale Validation and Implications for Educator Well-Being

Compounding disruptions to the U.S. educational context continue to pose a threat to educators’ psychological well-being. Validating context-specific measures is essential for identifying conditions that promote teachers’ psychological safety (PS) in contemporary educational settings, particularly as they relate to intrapersonal processes such as trait emotional intelligence (TEI). This study examined 174 PreK–12 educators working in multilingual and multicultural schools across Illinois. The majority identified as female (80.2 percent) and White (68.6 percent), with 22.3 percent born outside the United States. The study addressed three objectives: (1) to validate an adapted version of the Psychological Safety in School Scale for use with educators, (2) to validate the global TEI construct, derived from the Trait Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire–Short Form, and (3) to analyze the predictive relationship between global TEI and PS dimensions. Confirmatory factor analysis supported a four-factor model of PS and a unidimensional model of TEI, both demonstrating strong reliability and model fit. As a novel finding, structural equation modeling revealed that global TEI significantly and positively predicted all PS dimensions.