Abstract
The purpose of this study was to explore how perceptions of remembered instances ofteacher caring in K-College impacted the motivation of a college student. Implicationsfor teacher preparation programs and educational research were then drawn from theseperceptions. The first part of the title “A Family Affair” stems from the fact that theauthors are members of the same family – Father, Mother, and Son. Both the father andmother had prior knowledge of some (not all) of the instances of caring and non-caringdescribed by their son and thus shared a privileged insider position that offered uniqueinsights while cooperative peer checking was used both during and after the interview tohelp promote the trustworthiness of findings. It was found that the degree of caringshown by teachers had a profound influence on the participant’s willingness to put fortheffort especially in those courses that were not his favorite subjects which suggests that astrong connection exists between caring and student motivation. An importantimplication of this study is that teachers and those responsible for teacher preparationprograms would benefit by being aware of the impact of caring on students’ engagementand attitude toward learning. If the ultimate purpose of educational research is tocontribute to effective teaching, then the “soft variable” of caring should be consideredan important component of researcher preparation. It is hoped that readers will find thisstudy to be transferable to the degree that it resonates with their own experience asteachers, students, and parents, and which we refer to as “experiential validity”.
Highlights
The purpose of this study was to explore how perceptions of remembered instances of teacher caring in K-College impacted the motivation of a college student
“The longer we consider and examine the present day methods of education, the more clearly we recognise that children lack the care and consideration which would be in accord with their present and future needs, a care which considers the child's mental and physical needs and capacities
We notice that if children are not given the care which takes their stage of human development into consideration, they will lack the foundation for the task ahead in school and for their later lives in general.” (Friedrich Froebel, Founder of Kindergarten, 17821852; Moore, 1991)
Summary
Is it not sometimes the case that we qualitative researchers believe that our quantitatively-oriented colleagues do not care as much as we do about participants and that these colleagues think that qualitative research is inferior to quantitative research? One older and one more recent source may weaken this belief. Bauswell (1994) introduces his book Conducting Meaningful Experiments: 40 Steps to Becoming a Scientist by first saying that “meaningfulness” can be defined in different ways by different people but that “I happen to define a meaningful research study as one that has the potential of helping people and improving the human condition” (p. 1). Pilcher and Cortazzi (2016) interviewed 17 researchers who leaned quantitatively and found that most of them did not deprecate qualitative approaches but found these approaches to be valuable to scientific inquiry. Is it not sometimes the case that we qualitative researchers believe that our quantitatively-oriented colleagues do not care as much as we do about participants and that these colleagues think that qualitative research is inferior to quantitative research? Pilcher and Cortazzi (2016) interviewed 17 researchers who leaned quantitatively and found that most of them did not deprecate qualitative approaches but found these approaches to be valuable to scientific inquiry. Even if we differ with our quantitatively-oriented colleagues in terms of epistemology and methods, it might be beneficial to remind ourselves once in awhile that we are all on the same team and we hope that this article is received in this same spirit!
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