Teachers' Personality Ratings of Pupils in Scottish Primary Schools

S ummary . Thirty‐four teachers in primary schools in a Scottish city rated boys and girls in their classes on twenty‐five personal characterisctics, the characteristics being chosen largely on the criterion of their relevance, in the eyes of teachers, to school behaviour. In addition, measures were taken of the sociometric status, attendance and I.Q. of the pupils. The pupils were members of classes of 11–12‐year‐olds. Teachers were selected to give a balanced representation for both sexes, married and single women, and age groups; and were chosen from schools from various social backgrounds. In the first instance, a correlation matrix was computed for each of the sixty‐eight single sex groups of pupils. These individual matrices were combined to give six combined matrices—for men, single women and married women, of boys and of girls. The combined matrices were analysed by the method of principal components, each giving six factors which were then rotated by the Varimax method. Of the six rotated components obtained from each analysis, the first three accounted for between 48 per cent. and 66 per cent. of the total variance. These components show three highly consistent dimensions being used by the teachers in their assessment of pupils, the positive ends of which may be described, respectively, as ‘good behaviour,’ ‘high attainment’ and ‘sociability and social leadership.’ Results are discussed in relation to differences between the present analyses, to two broad evaluative ratings of the ‘pleasant’ child and the ‘pupil worth taking trouble over,’ to teachers' assessments of attainment, and finally, to results obtained from studies of teachers in secondary schools

Attendance · Developmental psychology · Mathematics education · Personality · Psychometrics · Varimax rotation · Early Childhood Education and Development · Psychology · Social Psychology · Teacher Education and Leadership Studies · Teacher Professional Development and Motivation

• Personality in Primary School Children

  Open Access•H J Eysenck, D Cookson•British Journal of Educational…•1969

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• A Psychological Approach to Research on Teachers' Classroom Decision‐making

  Open Access•James Calderhead•British Educational Research…•1981

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