Methodological Investigation of Perceived Structure of College Teaching across Two Cultures

Abstract

4 multidimensional scaling analyses based on similarity ratings among 30 operational statements of college-level psychology teaching activities (stimuli) using samples of psychology students and teachers from the USA and Germany as raters resulted in 7 teaching factors common in varying degrees to both cultures and one in each culture with no counterpart in the other. The paired German-American factors ordered from most to least agreement in accordance with the proportion of their highly loaded stimuli held in common by corresponding factors across cultures were: Teacher (Lecturing) Dynamism, Dynamik des Vortragens; Classroom Administration, Durchsetzung der Ordnung; Information Dissemination, Ausgabe von Informationen; Knowledge Dissemination, Verarbeitung von Wissen; Advisory Guidance, Studentische Beratung; Environmental Regulation, Regulierung von Randbedingungen; Teacher-Student Feedback, Lehrer-Student Rueckmeldung; Control of Student Behavior, Verwendung von audiovisuellen Hilfsmitteln. Analyses of the degree of student-teacher agreement of factors within cultures resulted in a greater degree of within culture agreement than the degree of cross-cultural agreement shown among the 8 teaching factors. The clarity of the current results may be interpreted as indicating that the method employed possesses potential for establishing the degree of perceptual generality and meaningfulness of teaching performance criteria.