The Development of the Child’S Conception of the Teacher

ONE OF THE purposes of the Preventive Psychi atry Research Program, of which this study forms a part, is to determine how and to what extent chil dren at various age levels can acquire an under standing and appreciation of the elements of behav ioral science , that is, of the forces operative in human behavior, and what the effect is of a change in this understanding and appreciation. Concern with the dynamics of development, or a " causal orientation" as it has been labeled for convenience, involves a consideration of the causes of behavior and also of its consequences. Human behavior has both an historical aspect (i. e., it developed in some way) and a future reference, (i. e., it tends to have specified effects under specified conditions). The approach or orientation to behavior may vary from an arbitrary judgmental, or "non-causal", approach to a consistent recognition of complex causation. In his social environment the child interacts with many different kinds of people. He interacts with his parents, teachers, other children, histor ical characters , and many individuals and groups. His behavior in each of his social interactions may be conceived as falling at some point on the non causal( arbitrary judgmental) , causal (sensitivity to complex forces) continuum. These considerations may be summarized in the form of the social causality matrix, given in Table 1. The abscissa represents aspects of the social environment; the ordinate, levels of causal orien tation. Only a few aspects of the social environ ment are included in the table. The matrix should be considered as incomplete insofar as number of columns is concerned. It could be extended con siderably in this dimension. The teacher, who represents in the table one aspect of the social environment, is an important person with whom children must interact. How do they conceive of the teacher? What do they assume I the teacher's function to be? How do children, in dividually and as a group, react to the teacher's behavior? Do they adopt a stereotyped approach or do they learn to appreciate some of the factors operating in the behavior of the teacher ? How d o they expect a teacher to approach a pupil? What is the effect of planned experiences on the growth of these conceptions and attitudes? It is with these questions that this paper is concerned. Since this investigation is not concerned with pu pil ratings of the effectiveness of the teacher but rather with the child's conception of the teacher's role and of the forces operating in the teacher's be havior, the studies reported in the literature deal ing with pupil ratings of the effectiveness of the teacher are not of direct concern. Of the available studies relative to teacher-pupil relationship, the investigations by Biber (1), Debus (2), and Gage, et. al. , (3) are of interest here. Biber developed a projective picture technique to explore the feelings of children about their relation ships to their teachers and their life in school. Thirteen picture situations were used with 94 first and second-grade children in a public school and 25 first-grade children in a private experimental school. The results indicated less feeling of pres sure and fewer fears in the experimental group. Debus in a study of 556 pupils in 20 fifth and sixth-grade classes found a significant correlation between attitudes of pupils toward previous teach ers and attitudes toward present teachers. He also reported a significant correlation between pupil's "cognitive motivation" and attitude toward teach ers. High cognitive motivation was associated with favorable perceptions of teachers. Gage, et. al., using three tests of teacher's un demanding of pupils correlated scores from these tests with pupil descriptions of teacher behavior. I Of interest here is an r of . 28 between pupils' judg