Student Teachers’ Attitudes towards the Humanistic Approach to Teaching and Learning in Schools

Summary This study explores the attitudes of 109 student teachers towards the humanistic approach to teaching and learning in schools. In the first phase of the study, all the student teachers completed a 20‐item questionnaire characterising the humanistic approach. In the second phase of the study, 16 student teachers were interviewed during their block teaching practice in order to further explore their responses to the questionnaire and also to explore their descriptions of teachers they had been taught by as pupils whom they remember with respect and affection, and those remembered with dislike or even hatred. The findings indicated that the student teachers generally held positive attitudes towards the humanistic approach, but that during their teaching practice there was an evident recognition of a distinction between holding such attitudes as ‘ideals’ and the difficulty, or even inappropriateness, of such attitudes being reflected in their actual behaviour when constrained by the constraints and re...