Emotion is now been granted a more prominent position in areas such as the study of moral or pro-social behaviour (Hoffman, 2001). Its importance is also increasingly being recognised in development education (Tormey, 2005). This research looks at the role of emotional competencies in supporting a global citizenship or development education perspective in student teachers’ practice. This was achieved by (1) investigating the level of emotional competency (as measured by the MSCEIT emotional intelligence skills test triangulated with qualitative interviews) within a group of third year teacher education students and (2) developing, implementing and evaluating an action research project from a development education perspective involving emotional intelligence within Initial Teacher Education (ITE). Although the initial results appeared to suggest that the course had little impact, closer analysis showed that it had a marked impact in some areas of emotional competences.