An Analysis of Teacher Opinion Regarding Student Academic Achievement and Teacher Ability to Cope with Underachievement.
ABSTPACT An instrument was designed 'o allow respondents to freely express their opinions concerning the major learning problems of students in the public schools, the quality and nature of their teacher education programs, and their retrospective views of courses which would have met their needs better than the ones which were taken. The instrument used to collect the data was an open-ended opinionnaire which was distributed to all public school administrative units within a 24-county area of southwest Missouri. Administrators were requested to distribute the instrument to faculty members and to some students as well. The 158 respondents indicated, among other things, that. their preparation was not adequate for "eaching the expressive and receptive communication skills, for beaching children appropriate questioning skills, for matching materials with children's reading levels, or for organizing classrooms for instruction in reading. Other conclusions drawn from this questionnaire are discussed and specific recommendations are made. (TS)
Change in Student Teacher Dogmatism.
AbstractThe purpose of this study was to determine if change in student teacher dogmatism during the student teaching experience was a function of the degree of dogmatism of the supervising teacher. The measure of dogmatism for all subjects was Rokeach’s Dogmatism Scale, Form E. The population in the study consisted of eighty student teachers and eighty supervising teachers. A significant change in dogmatism scores of student teachers did occur. Of the eighty student teacher subjects, fifty-three moved in the direction of the supervising teacher on the variable of dogmatism from pretest to posttest. Twenty-seven student teachers moved in the opposite direction. This difference was significant at the .01 level. The shift in mean dogmatism score for those student teachers who scored lower than the supervising teacher was significant at the .01 level. For the subjects who scored higher the mean shift was significant at the .05 level.
Dogmatism and the Public School Teacher
sense as a positiveness in assertion in matters of opinion when unwarranted or arrogant. C. Gratton Kemp concludes that the innerdirected &dquo;high dogmatic&dquo; is characterized by a lack of &dquo;openmindedness&dquo; and cannot &dquo;easily tolerate ambiguity.&dquo;2 In teaching, such a condition could well prove fatal to both the afflicted teacher and the exposed pupil. Admittedly, as William E. Drake has pointed out, education has become institutionalized, and consequently, a certain amount of