Perceived Teaching Styles

Abstract

FACTS BY themselves are of little interest. Only when a fact is associated with another idea, either hypothetically or actually, is its power for seducing the mind realized. However, it is an axiom of science that description precedes explanation. Thus the acquisition of facts provides the basis, and often the incentive, for the search for understanding. This present paper reports some facts about education. It outlines the ways in which teachers in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and the United States perceive their own teaching practices. More specifically it reports on the answers given by 12,293 respondents to twenty-one items in a questionnaire and on the differences discerned between selected sets of respondents. The selection of items was predicated on the assumption that certain kinds of educationally salient behaviors characterize classroom settings. These behaviors together constitute a theoretical that can be articulated in the following way. In general terms, a classroom is a setting in which incumbents of two positions, teacher and pupil, are engaged in a continuous transactional process. This process has its own formal and informal procedures which relate in particular to the educational task, to the pattern of social relationship, and to the problem of organizing and controlling the environment. The model has seven variable classes selected as representing areas of generally widespread concern to teachers. They are: content orientation; cognitive emphasis; interaction mode; organizational differentiation; control source; control mode; and motivational mode. Each is elaborated briefly below: 1. Content orientation is concerned with whether in teaching, emphasis is placed primarily on subject matter, interpersonal relationships, or discipline and control. Conventionally, subject-matter orientation has been identified as traditional, interpersonal orientation as progressive, and control orientation as authoritarian.