Children’S Perceptions of their Teachers’ Feelings Toward them Related to Self-Perception, School Achievement and Behavior

THE CHILD'S self-concept arises and develops in an interpersonal setting (30). Feelings about the self are established early in life and are mod ified by subsequent experiences. Among the sig nificant people believed to affect the child's feel ings about himself are first, his parents, and, later, his teachers. Ausubel (2) and Jourard and Remy (16) are among the few investigators who have reported results which support these theo retical contentions. Rogers (24), Snygg and Combs (27), among others, assign the self-concept a central place in their personality theories and suggest that the in dividual's self-concept is a major factor influ encing his behavior. Vigorous research in this areaby Martire (17) and Steiner (28) has produced corroborative evidence for these views. Only recently has the concept of the self been introduced into the school setting. Typical studies are those by Jersild (15), Reeder (23) and Stev ens (29). Jersild demonstrated the value of the self-concept theory in making the educative pro cess more valuable. Reeder, using grade school children and Stevens, working with college stu dents, explored the relation between self-concept and school achievement. Both of these investi gators found that positive feelings about the self are associated with good academic achievement. A series of studies dealing with teacher-pupil relations have sought to determine a) how children see and feel about their teachers (11); b) how teachers see and feel about their pupils (5, 20); and c) how teachers think their pupils see them selves (22). It has been widely recognized that teachers in fluence the personality development of their pu pils (21). Perkins, for example, found that teachers who had completed several years of child study were able to promote healthier personality growth in children, defined in terms of congru ency between the self and the ideal self. For this reason, many researchers, among them, Barr and Jones (3) andSymonds (31) are engaged in the study of personality development of the teacher herself. Despite the abundance of research on these as pects of t h e school setting, an important dimen sion, not previously investigated, is how the child perceives his teacher's feelings toward him. In an investigation of this interaction, we not only may gain insight into the question of what qualities make for an effective teacher but also an under standing of how the child's perception of his teach er's feelings, irrespective of its accuracy, re lates to his self concept, school achievement and classroom behavior. It is the purpose of this investigation to deter mine what the relation is between children's per ception of their teachers'feelings toward them and the variables: self-perception, academic achieve ment, and classroom behavior. Specifically, three hypotheses were tested: