An exploratory study of predictive relationships between personality characteristics of teachers of disadvantaged students and principals' ratings of teacher effectiveness

Abstract

The problem of the study was to determine if a predictive relationship existed between personality characteristics, sex, and years of teaching experience of teachers of disadvantaged youth and principals' ratings of the teachers' effectiveness.

Personality characteristics were also correlated with the environmental location of the teacher's current teaching assignment to determine if personality was a factor in accepting teaching assignments in various environmental settings (rural, small town-suburban, and inner city).

The population of the study consisted of fifty-two teachers of disadvantaged students enrolled in the Education for Employment (EFE) and Work Experience and Career Exploration Programs (WECEP) in Virginia.

The participants were asked to complete the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) and a personal data form and return the completed instruments by mail. Two copies of a teacher effectiveness rating form and appropriate directions were then mailed to each teacher's principal, along with a description of a hypothetical teacher. Each principal was instructed to use one of the rating forms to evaluate the EFE or WECEP teacher(s) employed in his school. The principals were instructed to use the second copy of the teacher effectiveness rating form to rate the hypothetical teacher. This was done to permit adjustments in ratings of the real-world teacher in order to reduce rating bias. The adjustment was accomplished through the use of a regression equation.

Completed and usable sets of data were obtained for forty-eight of the fifty-two teachers for an effective return of 92.3 percent. Data were then analyzed to answer the problem as stated for the study.

The findings indicated that: (1) male EFE and WECEP teachers in the study had certain personality characteristics which distinguished them as a group from published national norms for college-age men; (2) female EFE and WECEP teachers in the study had certain personality characteristics which distinguished them as a group from published national norms for college-age women; (3) there were correlations between the EFE and WECEP teachers' scores on the CPI subscales and principals' ratings of their effectiveness; however, for seventeen of the eighteen subscales, the correlations were not high enough to be used as predictors of teacher effectiveness; (4) EFE and WECEP teachers' scores on the CPI subscale Fe (femininity) correlated -.3730 with ratings of teacher effectiveness and was considered to be of practical value in predicting effectiveness ratings; (5) the number of years of teaching experience and sex of the EFE and WECEP teachers did not correlate at a practical predictive level with principals' ratings of the teachers' effectiveness; (6) teachers' scores on the CPI subscale Sa (self-acceptance) differed significantly when comparing the mean scores for Sa (self-acceptance) among the three environmental settings of rural, small town-suburban, and inner city; (7) principals' ratings of teacher effectiveness did not differentiate to any large degree between the hypothetical teacher and the real-world EFE and WECEP teachers; (8) forty-four of the forty-eight EFE and WECEP teachers were rated average or above on the teacher effectiveness scale; and (9) rating bias did exist in principals' ratings of the hypothetical vocational teacher.

Recommendations are made for the use of these findings as they relate to: (1) local school personnel officers, (2) teacher educators, and (3) further research.