"[2]: 11 Steiner breaks emotional literacy into five parts: Having its roots in counseling, it is a social definition that has interactions between people at its heart.
According to Steiner emotional literacy is about understanding your feelings and those of others to facilitate relationships, including using dialogue and self-control to avoid negative arguments.
The ability to be aware and read other people's feelings enables one to interact with them effectively so that powerful emotional situations can be handled in a skillful way.
[4][5][6] Educators did not like the way that 'emotional intelligence' focused so much on the individual and there were clear attempts to avoid the narrow EQ tests that were in use for two reasons: The National Curriculum in England and Wales emphasized a range of cognitive skills that were controlled through exams.
Sharp[16] has taken a broad approach to emotional literacy in a Local Education Authority (LEA) where he considers its development is important for teachers as well as pupils.
[4] Also, the development of emotional literacy was justified by arguing that its introduction would help to improve other factors such as behavior, attendance and academic achievement.
On the one hand the development of emotional literacy programs can be seen as progressive, but on the other the focus seems quite inward, as there is little reference leading to any broader concept of social and political reform.
One could judge a person's emotional literacy by observing what they brought to the situation, the way they interacted and the degree to which they showed empathy, and, the recognition of "self" and "others".
The way that one can reliably gauge the emotional literacy of a person is to see them interacting in a group and see how they behave towards other people of different genders, sexuality and social class.
Hence, it makes little sense to talk about emotional literacy of a person as if it were separate from such factors – someone may be able to empathize with people of their own sex, but not different sexualities or religions.
This indicates that key components of emotional literacy, which is a continual process, that includes dialogue, acceptance of ambiguity and the ability to reflect.
Emotional literacy involves connections between people and working with their differences and similarities while being able to handle ambiguity and contradiction.
Emotional intelligence is often presented as the absolute key to success in all areas of life: in school, at work, and in relationships.
While there is no doubt that all of these components do affect a person's success in life and especially in their career, to present this as a scientific theory requires the establishment of some clear principle on the basis of which the concept of emotional literacy can be structured, and without this principle, the concept becomes just an arbitrary set of factors affecting a person's life.
[27][28] Much personal criticism has gone to Daniel Goleman, who since the release of his first book has been accused of lacking a systematic scientific approach, not citing sources when borrowing and over-commercialising the concept of emotional intelligence.