Characteristics of Teachers who are “Liked Best” and “Disliked Most”

Abstract

This paper reports findings in a more or less informal series of studies in which an effort was made to ascertain some of the qualities that characterize school teachers who are or disliked by their pupils. The information on which the studies are based was variously obtained by means of written reports, compositions, personal interviews, and, in a limited number of cases, by means of records of children's conversations with their parents or with each other. The data consist in part of retrospective reports by adults, based upon childhood recol lections, concerning the teachers whom they or disliked when they attended elemen tary school. Since this part of the investiga tion was undertaken first, the results obtained in it will be reported first in this paper. The adults who supplied descriptions of their childhood teachers were members of one of the writer's classes at Teachers College. Mimeographed directions were distributed to each member. These directions simply asked the student to think back over his elementary school days, to try to recollect his various teachers, to single out the teacher whom he best, and the teacher he disliked most (or least), and, in each case, to describe in writing the characteristics and qualities of the teacher in question. It was expressly di rected that the reports were to be anonymous. Other questions included in the directions called for information as to whether, in the judgment of the person submitting the report, the teachers who were described were similarly or disliked by other pupils at the time. Another section of the directions asked the students to describe an ideal ele mentary school teacher. The findings ob tained in response to these additional ques tions are not reported here; the responses concerning recollections of the attitudes of other pupils tended to be rather indefinite, and the descriptions of the ideal teacher tended either largely to duplicate the ac counts of the best liked teacher, or, in some cases, to combine concrete characteriza tions with general philosophical concerns.