The Impact of Spiritual Intelligence Training - with an Emphasis on the Quranic Teachings- on Reactions to Academic Stress and Academic Self-Efficacy among High School Boys in Shabestar

The aim of this study was to examine the impact of spiritual intelligence training - with an emphasis on the Quranic teachings - on reactions to academic stress and academic self-efficacy among students. This quasi-experimental research had a pretest-posttest control group design. The population of the study included all tenth-grade boys in Shabestar in academic year 20152016. The sample was drawn via convenience sampling and 40 students were selected and randomly assigned to experimental and control groups. The experimental group received eight sessions of spiritual intelligence training. The research instruments comprised Gadzella’s Student-Life Stress Inventory(SLSI, 1991) and the Morgan-Jinks Student Efficacy Scale(MJSES, 1999). The content validity of the questionnaires was confirmed by experts and the overall reliability coefficients obtained for SLSI and MJSES were 0.83 and 0.85, respectively. The research hypotheses were analyzed through covariance analysis. Results demonstrated that spiritual intelligence training had a significant impact on students’ reactions to academic stress. In addition, spiritual intelligence training had a significant effect on students’ academic self-efficacy . Due to the fact that stress is a prevailing problem among students, it is recommended that a number of initiatives be designed to familiarize teachers, students as well as families with spiritual intelligence.