Students’ and teachers’ cognitions about good teachers

Students’ and teachers’ cognitions about goodteachers

J.J. Beishuizen* and E. Hof

Division of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Leiden University, The Netherlands

C.M. van Putten

Division of Psychometrics and Research Methodology, Leiden University, The Netherlands

S. Bouwmeester and J.J. Asscher

Division of Developmental and Educational Psychology, Leiden University, The Netherlands

Background. Good teachers have been studied ever since Plato described howSocrates taught by asking questions of his audience. Recent findings shed lighton two characteristics of good teachers: their personality and their ability.However, more attention has been paid to teachers’ practices and opinionsthan to students’ views.

Aims. The study reported here attempted to deepen our understanding ofwhat students think about good teachers.

Sample. Students of four age groups (7, 10, 13, and 16 years of age) andteachers from primary and secondary schools were asked to write an essay onthe good teacher.

Methods. The correspondence between conceptual items in the essays wasinvestigated by determining the extent to which they were used in the sameessays to describe good teachers.

Results. Correspondence analysis revealed two dimensions. The first dimen-sion reflected the preference of students and teachers for describing the goodteacher in terms of either personality or ability characteristics. The seconddimension was interpreted as an orientation in the essays towards eitherattachment to, detachment from or commitment to school and teachers.Students and teachers were compared to establish the amount of (dis)agree-ment about what makes a good teacher. Primary school students describedgood teachers primarily as competent instructors, focusing on transfer ofknowledge and skills, whereas secondary school students emphasisedrelational aspects of good teachers. Teachers, however, considered goodteachers in the first place a matter of establishing personal relationships withtheir students. Consequently, primary school students and teachers disagreedabout the characteristics of good teachers. In secondary education, disagree-ments between teachers and students were relatively small.

*Requests for reprints should be addressed to Dr. J.J. Beishuizen, Leiden University, Department ofDevelopmental and Educational Psychology, PO Box 9555, 2300 RB Leiden, The Netherlands(e-mail: [email protected]).

British Journal of Educational Psychology (2001), 71, 185± 201 Printed in Great Britain

# 2001 The British Psychological Society

Conclusions. The research method of collecting free essays and utilisingcorrespondence analysis to represent conceptual items and groups ofparticipants seems promising as long as a theoretical framework is availableto interpret the resulting representation of similarities between items andgroups of participants.

Research into good teachers has a long tradition. One of the first outstanding examples

of good teachers was Plato’s Meno dialogue, in which the craft of the Socratic dialogue

was demonstrated. Since the 1920s empirical research has substantiated our under-standing of the qualities of good teachers. In the course of development of this line of

research, several perspectives have been adopted to clarify different characteristics of

good teachers (Verloop, 1995). These perspectives can be categorised in two main areas:

personality views and ability views on good teachers. We will discuss examples of both

views. The conclusion seems warranted that our knowledge of good teachers has madeconsiderable progress. However, almost all evidence has been collected by interviewing

or observing teachers. The voice of students has seldom been recorded (Brekelmans,

Wubbels, & Creton, 1990; Peterson, 1988). It is important to find out what students

think about good teachers. Misunderstandings about mutual views of teachers and

students may harm the efficacy and efficiency of teaching and learning, e.g., when

students expect teachers to provide clear directions about the completion of

assignments and teachers prefer to focus on establishing warm relationships withstudents. Besides, it is useful to know whether disagreements between students and

teachers tend to grow in the course of the students’ school career. The research reported

here was aimed at studying the views of teachers and students on the good teacher. The

distinction between personality views and ability views on the good teacher was used asa context of interpretation of students’ and teachers’ cognitions. That is, the content of

students’ and teachers’ essays was analysed and represented in a two-dimensional space.

Both dimensions were related to the personality and ability views in order to make a

comparison between current views of teachers and students on the one hand, and the

literature on good teachers on the other hand. Secondly, students of different agegroups were cross-sectionally compared to trace differences in perspective between age

groups. A short description of the two views on good teachers will be given, followed by

a summary of the research pertinent to each view. After that the research method of this

study, analysing free essays, will be outlined in the context of existing methods for

studying good teachers.

According to the personality perspective, the good teacher’ s balanced and mature

personality is crucial. Viewed from this perspective, the teacher can be typified as `kind,serious, enthusiastic’ , and possibly àttractive’. Research into the personality of teachers

goes back to the ’20s to the ’40s, when styles of leadership were related to the

performance of students. The personality view is closely related to the humanistic

tradition in education, which considers the development of human values as animportant educational task. Lowyck (1994) noticed that in every job with a strong

social component qualities like friendliness are very opportune. In research of this type,

broad and superficial personality traits were used and, consequently, few specific

186 J.J. Beishuizen et al.

conclusions on the relation between teacher characteristics and learning performance

could be drawn. Nevertheless, students and teachers may adopt this perspective when

they are describing the good teacher.

The ability perspective on teachers highlights skills, knowledge, and experience ofteachers as crucial factors in good teaching. A striking characteristic of good teachers is

being able to execute skills routinely. Emmer, Evertson, and Anderson (1980) compared

seven teachers with effective, and seven teachers with ineffective classroom manage-

ment techniques. Especially during the first day of a new school year, the effective

managers approached the class differently in comparison with the non-effective

managers. The effective teacher devoted a lot of time to explaining procedures onputting away personal belongings, visiting the toilet, and drinking water. Procedures

were explained clearly, transgressions were stopped and corrected rapidly. Leinhardt

(1993) described protocols for common teaching routines, for example discussing

homework, making teaching plans, explaining ideas, illustrating ideas and having

classroom discussions. During the 1960s and 1970s, research concerning process-product relations delivered many insights into the relationship between the acts of

teachers and the performance of students. Rosenshine and Furst (1973) concluded that

nine process variables contributed to good learning results: clarity, variability,

enthusiasm, task orientation, criticism, indirectness, student opportunity to learn,

structuring comments, varying the level of questions and cognitive activities. Calder-head (1996), however, concluded that process-product studies often produced trivial

and sometimes contradictory results. Characteristics of teachers from the skill-oriented

perspective could be àble to keep order’ , `gives clear instructions’ .

Knowledge and experience are closely intertwined characteristics of good teachers. The

teacher as an inexhaustible source of knowledge and expertise has a long-standing

reputation in education. From the ability perspective on teaching, teachers can betypified as èxplains well’, `knows a lot of examples’ , `gives clear outlines’ , `well able to

improvise’ , àdapts explanation flexibly to the needs of the students’ , ùnderstands

quickly what the problems in the class are like’. Shulman (1986) distinguished three types

of conceptual knowledge of teachers: (1) Content knowledge: not only knowledge of

facts, ideas and rules, but also knowledge of the structure of the domain, of the `why’ ofthe connections within the domain. (2) Pedagogical content knowledge: knowledge of

the level of difficulty of ideas and rules, knowledge of examples, analogies, illustrations,

demonstrations, that contribute to understanding. (3) Curricular knowledge: knowledge

of alternative routes through the subject matter, knowledge of side paths, that some

students have to go through in order to acquire understanding. Pedagogical contentknowledge may be considered as part of teachers’ craft knowledge, integrated

knowledge which represents teachers’ accumulated wisdom with respect to their teaching

practice’ (Van Driel, Verloop, & De Vos, 1998, p. 674). The latter kind of knowledge was

tapped in studies in which teachers had to interpret interactions of teachers and students.

When they were shown videotapes of classroom situations, that had to be reproduced,

expert teachers reproduced and interpreted more of what they had seen than noviceteachers (Peterson & Comeaux, 1987; Sabers, Cushing, & Berliner, 1991).

Kessels and Korthagen (1996) emphasised the distinction Aristotle made between

theoretical knowledge (episteme) and practical knowledge (phronesis). Korthagen

(1998) described theoretical knowledge as knowledge with a big K, enabling the owner

187Cognitions about good teachers

to use conscious reflection on a network of concepts and rules. Practical knowledge in

his vision especially supports the perception of complex situations and finding the right

action. Borko and Livingston (1989) compared three experienced maths teachers with

their trainees. A lesson was observed, and the teachers were interviewed during thepreparation of lessons. Experienced teachers appeared to spend less time on preparing

lessons and were more focused on long term planning. Experienced teachers did more

planning in the context of teaching’ : they thought of more examples on the spot, and

improvised more. The trainees had to make up examples in advance, had more

difficulty answering questions of students and, when students appeared not to

understand certain parts, had more difficulty adapting their lesson. SchoÈ n (1987)proposed that experienced teachers are able to reflect during teaching (`reflection-in-

action’ ). To summarise, research on good teachers has highlighted personality and

ability characteristics of good teachers. Good teachers dispose of a balanced and

mature personality, and have developed experience-based knowledge and skills. The

question addressed in this study was which perspectives prevail in students’ andteachers’ free essays on the good teacher. In order to understand the rationale behind

the choice of collecting free essays as the research method adopted in this study, a

comprehensive overview of existing techniques will be presented.

Research on good teachers has been conducted using various research methods.

Calderhead (1996) described five categories of research methods to study characteristicsof the good teacher: (a) simulations, (b) commentaries, (c) concept mapping and

repertory grid, (d) ethnography and case studies, and (e) narratives.

(a) In simulation studies real or simulated problem situations are presented to

teachers, either on paper or on videotape. In policy-capturing studies teachers are

exposed to a series of descriptions of decision-making situations, e.g., of behavioural

problems in the classroom. In controlled planning tasks teachers have to execute aplanning task.

(b) When teachers are asked to comment on their own behaviour, they have to think

aloud during the completion of a planning task (Peterson, Marx, & Clark, 1978) or they

are shown a videotape of their own lesson and comment on it orally. Structured

interviews also belong to this category.(c) In research in which concept mapping and repertory grid techniques are used,

teachers are given concept labels, which they have to organise or interrelate.

(d) In ethnography and case studies, a single teacher is interviewed, observed and

described extensively (see, for example, Leinhardt, 1988).

(e) Narratives contain diaries, oral or written stories, and biographies of teachers.Teachers are instructed to tell or write down what they have done. In addition to this,

they have to consider the reasons for choosing a certain procedure and its successful or

unfavourable outcome.

In all of the above-mentioned methods, previously composed stimulus materials (case

descriptions or rating scales) have to be judged by respondents. Often these a priori

stimuli get a priori scale values too. These judgments are then analysed and interpreted.Kutnick and Jules (1993) called these research methods `normative’ because previously

composed stimuli (cases or items in rating scales) have to be used. In accordance with

Kutnick and Jules we decided to ask students and teachers to produce a free essay on

the subject `What is a good teacher?’ , without any restriction on the generation of ideas.


There were two reasons for adopting the free essay method. First, because we included

relatively young students in our sample we wanted to avoid the disadvantages of

normative methods which confronted students with concepts and dimensions which

might be unfamiliar to them. For the same reason, more open planning orcategorisation tasks were not suitable: asking students to comment upon videotaped

lessons of unknown teachers might be too difficult. Asking them to interpret lessons of

their own teacher might produce socially desirable or idiosyncratic responses.

Therefore, both the `normative’ methods and the methods in which videotapes or

other cases have to be analysed did not seem appropriate for our goals. The second

reason for adopting the free essay method was that we could apply a recently developeddata-analysis technique, correspondence analysis, with which complex sets of concepts

resulting from the free essays could be represented and scaled. This technique enabled

us to profit from the advantages of an open task whilst avoiding the disadvantages of a

simplistic method of logically categorising concepts and comparing frequencies of

appearance of concepts in essays, which were the techniques of Kutnick and Jules(1993). Kutnick and Jules explored primary and secondary school students’ opinions on

good teaching on Trinidad and Tobago. They asked 1633 students (about 5% of the

relevant age groups on the islands), 7 to 8 year-olds and 10 to 11 year-olds of a primary

school, 12 to 13 year-olds and 16 to 17 year-olds of a secondary school, to write an

essay on the subject `What is a good teacher?’ . Students were asked not to mentionnames of teachers in the essays, but to write about good teachers in general. The essays,

which counted on average 43 (7 to 9 year-olds) to 109 (16 to 17 year-olds) words, were

submitted to a content analysis. Ten percent of the essays were used to note all

conceptual items. After removing the concepts that were mentioned twice or multiple

times, 166 conceptual items remained. Then, these items were categorised in logically

related sets’ . The following sets were distinguished: `physical and personal character-istics of the teacher, quality of the relationship between teacher and pupil, control of

behaviour by the teacher, descriptions of the teaching process, and expected

educational and life outcomes that the pupil may obtain through the teachers’ efforts’

(Kutnick & Jules, 1993, pp. 405± 406). Young students typified good teachers as careful,

well-groomed, attractive, and intelligent. Good teachers punish physically. Eleven- and12-year-olds characterised the good teacher by emphasising their predominant didactic

role: promoting a well-organised class. Sixteen-year-olds distinguished all kinds of good

teachers: professional, devoted, a brilliant teacher, working towards outcomes that

have both long-term and short-term value.

In the research described below, Kutnick and Jules’ (1993) method of collecting freeessays was followed. However, we did not categorise conceptual items by logical

analysis but, instead, derived the similarities and differences between the conceptual

items from the extent to which they were used in the same essays to describe good

teachers. We applied correspondence analysis (BenzeÂ cri, 1992; Greenacre, 1993;

Greenacre & Blasius, 1994) in order to arrive at a multidimensional scaling of items

and participants. This approach offered considerable advantages over the method ofcontent analysis as used by Kutnick and Jules. First, correspondence analysis creates a

low-dimensional space, in which both conceptual items and participants are represented

as points. So, one and the same solution describes the structure of the conceptual items,

as well as the similarities and differences between the participants. The various age


groups of students and the group of teachers could be compared on the basis of these

quantifications. Secondly, instead of clustering conceptual items into categories,

correspondence analysis arranges conceptual items into dimensions. This solution

enabled us to compare different groups of participants on the same dimension.The following research questions could be answered with the use of this design:

1. Which concepts are used by students to describe the good teacher? Is there a

difference in perspective on good teachers between students of different age groups?

2. Which concepts are used by teachers to describe the good teacher? Is there a

difference between teachers working with different age groups?

3. What are the similarities and differences between teachers’ and students’perspectives on good teachers? Is there a change in (dis)agreement when students get

older?

4. What are the similarities and differences between a logical and an empirical

analysis of students’ and teachers’ essays on good teachers?

These questions were answered by interpreting the location of the various age groupsof students and the group of teachers in the two-dimensional space, which resulted from

correspondence analysis, in terms of the dimensions of the space. These interpretations

were compared with the research-based personality and ability views on good teachers.

Differences between age groups of students and between age groups and teachers were

analysed with analysis of variance. Finally, we compared the interpretation of thedimensions resulting from correspondence analysis with the logical categorisation of

conceptual items provided by Kutnick and Jules.

Method

ParticipantsTwo primary schools and one school for secondary education, located in suburban

areas around the city of Leiden, were invited to participate in the experiment. The

schools were selected because of existing relationships and on practical grounds. The

schools were invited to join the project and received an explanation of the objectives,

the procedure and the instruments used to collect the data. The assignment of writingan essay on the good teacher was carried out by 198 students: 40 seven-year-old

children (grade 4), 49 ten-year-old children (grade 7), 45 thirteen-year-old children

(grade 9), and 64 sixteen-year-old children (grade 12). Seven primary school teachers

and ten secondary school teachers participated in the experiment.

Procedure

The primary school students received an oral instruction from their own teacher with

the assignment to write an essay on the good teacher. The teacher emphasised that the

students had to write an essay about good teachers in general, without referring to any

particular teacher. The teacher explained that the essays were to be used in a research

project, and would be sent directly to Leiden University without inspection by any ofthe teachers in school. No minimum or maximum amount of words was prescribed. The

students were asked to put their name, class, and age on the essay. In the secondary

school, the assignment to write an essay about good teachers was given by one of the

teachers. The choice of the class in which students wrote the essay was determined by


practical conditions (no test or other activities scheduled). The secondary school

students received the following instruction on paper: `Write an essay entitled: ``What is

a good teacher?’ ’ . Write an expository essay about the good teacher. In this essay you

describe in your own words how a good teacher should be. Do not mention names ofteachers and do not describe one particular teacher, but the good teacher in general.

There is no minimum nor maximum number of words; just put on paper what you

consider the most important points. Put your name, class and age on your essay’ . The

primary and secondary school teachers received a written instruction to write an essay

on the good teacher or to make a point by point listing of characteristics of good

teachers. They were asked to provide their name, discipline and number of years ofprofessional experience.

Analysis

Teachers and students produced 215 essays. First, lists of conceptual items were

extracted from the essays. One of the investigators deduced 239 conceptual items fromthe essays. Two judges independently applied the same procedure on 20 randomly

selected essays. The identification of conceptual items was identical in 91.1% of the

cases. That is, of all conceptual items both judges extracted from the text, 91.1%

appeared on both lists. Next, the list had to be shortened by replacing all synonyms

with one descriptor. Two judges independently joined conceptual items with identical orclosely related meanings. Only those items which appeared on both short lists were

included in the final list of 118 conceptual items (see below and Appendix). Each

concept had two values. Category 1 was used if a concept was present in a particular

essay of a student, category 0 was used if a concept was absent. Zeros were considered

as missing values because the absence of a concept in an essay has no unequivocal

meaning: either the student considers the concept as not characteristic for the goodteacher, or he or she has no particular opinion about the relevance of the concept for

good teachers. This resulted in a data matrix with 1s and 0s for 215 essays by 118

conceptual items. These data contain information about the similarities among the

items: the extent to which two items are used simultaneously in one and the same essay

indicates the similarity between the two items. The same idea can be applied to thestudents: two students are considered to be similar by the degree in which they use the

same conceptual items. This approach does not question the reasons why a particular

student uses a particular conceptual item in his or her essay. The mere presence of a

conceptual item in an essay is taken as an empirical fact which can be related as such to

other empirical facts, i.e., the presence of other conceptual items in the same or otheressays. Taken together, these simultaneous occurrences of conceptual items in essays

form a pattern of empirical facts which can be reduced to its essential characteristics by

statistical techniques. The resulting empirical model can, subsequently, be interpreted in

terms of dimensions used by students to describe their views on what they consider as a

good teacher.

Correspondence analysis is a technique that represents these similarities in a low-dimensional space as distances between items as well as between participants: the

distance between similar items and between similar participants (students and teachers)

is small, whereas the distance between dissimilar items and between dissimilar

participants is large. The computer program HOMALS (SPSS, 1998; Van de Geer,


1993) was used for correspondence analysis. HOMALS computes scale values for both

item and participant points in a low-dimensional space. Item points were placed in the

centre of participants using an item. As is the case with principal-components analysis,

one has to decide on the number of dimensions of the correspondence space and onehas to come to an interpretation of each dimension. A dimension gets its interpretation

from those items with high positive versus high negative scale values on that dimension.

Sixteen conceptual items and nine essays were not included in the final analysis

because the combination of participants who chose one of these conceptual items

influenced the analysis in such a way that the solution degenerated. That is, the

conceptual items were used infrequently or in idiosyncratic combinations. It might beinteresting to know these idiosyncratic combinations. However, keeping these

combinations in the analysis resulted in solutions only showing large distances between

these combination points at one side and all other points as an undifferentiated mass at

the other side. So, a reduced data matrix of 206 participants (teachers and students) and

102 items was used in the final analysis. The Appendix contains the list of 102 items.Their correspondences were represented in a two-dimensional space (eigenvalues of

these dimensions, called inertia’ in correspondence analysis, were 0.33 and 0.29). A

third dimension could not be meaningfully interpreted. Participant scores on both

dimensions were used to describe differences in views on good teachers between age

groups of students and the group of teachers. Mean group differences were tested withpost-hoc t-tests.

Results

When comparing the size of the essays between the various age groups, number of

conceptual items turned out to differ significantly (F (3, 195) = 25.8, p < .01). Theessays of students from grade 9 (13-year-old) and grade 7 (10-year-old) contained the

greatest number of conceptual items (11.6 and 10.4 items per essay), followed by the

essays of students from grade 12 (16-year-old, 8.8 items per essay) and grade 4 (7-year-

old, 4.6 items per essay). Teachers gave twice as many statements about the good

teacher (18.5 items per essay) as students (9.0 items per essay; F (1, 213) = 56.4,p < .01).

Figure 1 shows the two-dimensional solution with representative items, covering the

entire range of both dimensions. A complete list of items and their scale values is

available in the Appendix. The first, horizontal, dimension can be interpreted as the

extent to which the good teacher is described in terms of either personality or abilitycharacteristics. Items with high loadings on the ability side of the dimension are `can

teach all subjects’ , takes care of the classroom’ , and `careful’ . Items with high loadings

on the personality side of the dimension are `calm’, `puts things in a positive

perspective’ , and `makes students respect their teacher’ . The distinction between

personality or ability characteristics corresponds with various views on good teachers

which have been put forward in the Introduction.The second, vertical, dimension is more difficult to interpret, taking the distribution

of conceptual items into account. The vertical dimension may reflect the distance from

which the student considers schools and teachers. That is, grade 9 students may display

a rather detached view, because (1) they recently entered secondary education and are


in the process of feeling at home in their new school environment, and (2) they are in themidst of the period of physical and mental developments which characterise the onset of

adolescence. In contrast with grade 9 students, grade 1 and grade 4 children may exhibit

attachment, because they feel dependent on what teachers think and do, whereas grade

12 students have acquired an autonomous position from which they are able to

appreciate the value of a positive commitment with school and teachers. Typical

`detachment’ items are characterised by a negation in the wording: `does not alwaysassign independent tasks’ , `does not punish too heavily’. Typical àttachment’ items are

`pays attention’ , and òrganises nice things’ . Typical `positive commitment’ items are

`puts things in a positive perspective’ , `calm’, `shows self-criticism’ . The àttachment’

items can be found on the ability side of the first dimension, whereas the `positive

commitment’ items appear on the personality side of the first dimension Thiscombination of first and second dimension results in a triangular distribution of items

in the two-dimensional space (see Figure 1). As such, the second dimension appears to

reflect the attitude of the students towards school and teachers, instead of their view on

good teachers. Separate analyses of variance for the first and second dimension both

Figure 1. Representation of conceptual items in the two-dimensional space which

resulted from the correspondence analysis


revealed significant age group effects (for the first dimension: F (4, 201) = 102.10,

p < .001; for the second dimension: F (4, 201) = 30.91, p < .001). Table 1 shows the

mean scores of the four age groups and the group of teachers on both dimensions.

The participant scores on both dimensions are displayed in Figure 2. The different

age groups are marked. Post-hoc t-tests showed that all age groups differed significantlyon the first dimension (see Table 1). On average, teachers had the most extreme scores

on the personality side of the ability versus personality dimension, followed by grade

12, grade 9, grade 7 and, finally, grade 4. On the second dimension, the means of grade

4 and grade 7 and the means of grade 4 and the teachers did not differ significantly. All

remaining differences between age groups means were significant (see Table 2). Grade 9had the highest mean, followed by grade 12, grade 7, grade 4 and the teachers.

Differences between primary and secondary school teachers were not significant.

To what extent were the students influenced by their teachers when writing their

essays? Did the students describe their own teacher, although the task assignment

explicitly asked them not to refer to any particular teacher? For grade 12 and 9, thesecondary school students, this question is irrelevant because these students had

different teachers for every subject. Because two different primary schools participated

in the study, we were able to make comparisons between grade 7 and grade 4 students

of different schools. For grade 7, the differences in scores between both groups were not

significant. However, for grade 4, students of different schools differed in their scores

on the second dimension (t (31) = 2.63, p < .05). Mean scores on the seconddimension were -0.31 and -3.40 for both groups. The size of this effect was rather small,

2 = .19. As can be seen in Table 1 and Figure 2, there is no correspondence between

the views of teachers and the views of their own students. All teachers are clustered in

the lower left part of the graph, whereas the student groups are scattered on both

dimensions.

Discussion

The research method of collecting free essays and utilising correspondence analysis to

represent conceptual items and groups of participants in a n-dimensional was

successful. Two dimensions were found: the ability versus personality dimension,

which can be linked to existing views on good teachers and the attachment/detachment/

Table 1. Participant scores on both dimensions

First dimension Second dimension

Group M SD N M SD N

Grade 4 6.77 2.18 33 71.91 3.64 33Grade 7 2.12 2.38 49 71.33 2.81 49Grade 9 0.09 1.28 45 3.24 2.34 45Grade 12 71.28 2.48 65 0.86 2.75 65Teachers 74.25 2.05 14 74.16 1.91 14


Figure 2. Representation of age groups and teachers in the two-dimensional space

which resulted from the correspondence analysis

Table 2. Results of post-hoc t-tests comparing age group means on both dimensions

Person-oriented vs. task-oriented (Inter)dependency vs. detachment

Age group t d.f. p < t d.f. p <

Grade 4-grade 7 8.96 80 .00 7.81 80 .89Grade 4-grade 9 16.95 76 .00 77.11* 51 .00Grade 4-grade 12 15.79 96 .00 74.21 96 .00Grade 4-teachers 16.13 45 .00 2.18 45 .09Grade 7-grade 9 5.21* 75 .00 78.54 92 .00Grade 7-grade 12 7.37 112 .00 74.18 112 .00Grade 7-teachers 9.09 61 .00 3.53 61 .01Grade 9-grade 12 3.77* 101 .00 4.74 108 .00Grade 9-teachers 7.49* 16 .00 10.75 57 .00Grade 12-teachers 4.19 77 .00 6.48 77 .00

* Levene test for equality of variances significant (p < .05)


commitment dimension, for which no clear theoretical framework is available. Primary

school students described good teachers primarily as competent instructors, whereas

secondary school students emphasised relational aspects of good teachers. Teachers,

however, considered good teaching in the first place as establishing personalrelationships with their students. Consequently, primary school students and teachers

disagreed about the characteristics of good teachers. Disagreement decreased in

secondary education.

The conceptual items students used in their essays on good teachers could be ordered

on two dimensions. On the first dimension there was a difference between students of

different age groups. Young students displayed an ability view while older studentsshowed a personality view on good teachers. So, this dimension fits within the main

perspectives on good teachers which were described in the introduction. On the second

dimension older students displayed an attitude of positive commitment, which allows

for distinctive roles of teachers and students and the interdependence of roles (Kutnick

& Jules, 1993), after taking a rather detached stance upon entering secondaryeducation. The position of primary school children on the second dimension was

interpreted as more dependently attached. Several tentative explanations can be put

forward. The first is that detachment can be attributed partly to feelings of uncertainty

which students experience during their first grade in secondary education. Because they

are unfamiliar with the practice of teaching in the new educational environment, theyare unable to present a clear picture of what they consider as a good teacher. Secondly,

as young adolescents they are in a transition period themselves without a clear frame of

reference necessary to develop a new view on what constitutes good teaching. As

Kutnick and Jules (1993, p. 412) stated, `children’ s explanations move from an ego-

defined dependence on the teacher to an awareness of the distinctive roles of teacher

and pupil and an interdependence of roles, a finding that contextualises (to theclassroom) research previously undertaken concerning the development of relationships

(Youniss, 1980) and authority (Damon, 1977)’. However, the interpretation of the

second dimension lacks clear support from existing theories about good teachers.

Therefore, we consider this interpretation as tentative.

Teachers displayed an explicit personality view on teachers, both in primary and insecondary education. This position is in contrast with the ability view of, in particular,

primary school students. These students expect task-oriented teaching competence,

whereas teachers emphasise good relationships. This discrepancy disappears in the

course of secondary education. Eccles, Midgley, and Adler (1984; Eccles, Wigfield,

Harold, & Blumenfeld, 1993) proposed that in secondary education an increasingdiscrepancy arises between students’ needs for autonomy and control on the one hand

and the opportunity that schools offer to learn independently on the other hand. This

increasing discrepancy might cause the children’ s task value beliefs to decline. However,

our data suggest that, as far as the teachers’ valuing of establishing good relationships

as part of good teaching is concerned, discrepancies with students’ views, and,

consequently, their needs, tend to decrease, rather than increase, in the course ofsecondary education. Another explanation might be that, because primary school

teachers tend to value interpersonal relationships, students may not consider this

dimension as a useful discriminator between good and bad teachers. Secondary school

teachers, on the other hand, may be more easy to differentiate on the basis of their


interpersonal orientation (P. Tomlinson, personal communication, November 11, 1999)

Primary school teachers should be aware of the fact their children expect task-

oriented expertise. Teachers should accommodate for this attitude, apart from their

own emphasis on relational aspects. When relating our results with Kutnick and Jules’(1993) findings, a comparison must be made between Kutnick and Jules’ categories of

conceptual items and our two-dimensional solution. Kutnick and Jules distinguished

five sets of categories: (1) physical and personal characteristics, (2) relationships

between teacher and student, (3) behavioural control, (4) teaching process, and (5)

outcomes. The first two sets are related to the personality side of our first dimension.

The remaining sets resemble the ability side of the first dimension. So, the content of theconceptual items is not very different. Kutnick and Jules concluded that the children on

Trinidad and Tobago went through a series of developmental stages in which an

original ègo-defined dependence’ is followed by an awareness of the interdependence of

roles. Our data are not appropriate to confirm this developmental trend, because we did

not collect longitudinal data. An important difference from Kutnick and Jules was thatour young secondary school students displayed a detached view on school and teachers.

Another difference is related to the position of teachers in Trinidad and Tobago on the

one hand, and in the Netherlands on the other hand. Kutnick and Jules observed that

students desire à sensitive and supportive relationship with their teachers’ . The authors

were concerned about the fact that teacher training programmes seem to be dominatedby skills and knowledge about the promotion of learning. This picture was not

confirmed by our data. First, primary school students actually emphasised the ability

characteristics of good teachers. Secondly, teachers mentioned establishing good

relationships as an important characteristic of good teaching. So, the situation in the

Netherlands appears to be opposite to the interests of students and teachers in Trinidad

and Tobago. It is clear that cultural biases should be taken seriously when drawingconclusions about expectations of teachers and students in primary and secondary

education. The main difference between our results and Kutnick and Jules’ analysis

concerns the level at which the perspectives of students were described. Our

correspondence analysis resulted in dimensions on which conceptual items and age

groups could be ordered, whereas Kutnick and Jules’ analysis led to nominal categories.So, our approach resulted in a higher level of description of data.

Our approach of using correspondence analysis to explore the content of free essays

written by students and teachers is a first step towards extending our repertory of

research methods with which students’ and teachers’ perspectives on characteristics of

good teachers can be studied, and, consequently, towards extending our understandingof good teachers. However, the way we interpreted the data of the correspondence

analysis illustrates that reducing essays to conceptual items and describing these items

in a two-dimensional space is a process which heavily bears upon the use of the existing

theoretical framework. We need theoretical conceptions about good teachers in order

to understand the attitudes of students and teachers. The first dimension of our two-

dimensional description of the data could be linked to existing theories, but the seconddimension was more complex and could not easily be understood in terms of our

current theoretical framework. Therefore, the dimensions should be further explored in

new studies in which students of various age groups are explicitly asked to use one or

both dimensions when describing good teachers. After that, an inventory of good


teaching styles might be developed with items reflecting positions on both dimensions.

Data collected with such an inventory may be compared with performance measures of

students who are confronted with different teaching styles to establish relationships

between views on good teachers and actual outcomes of teaching practices. Secondly,longitudinal research is necessary to study developmental trends which may account for

the differences in age groups which were found in our cross-sectional approach.

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Received 22 July 1999; revised version received 9 August 2000

AppendixList of 102 conceptual items used in the analysis

Scale ValueItem Dimension 1 Dimension 2

Quiet 75.969 74.033Puts things into a positive perspective 75.935 75.229Applies pupils’ solutions 75.736 71.441Organises work 75.385 73.924Makes pupils respect teachers 75.004 71.355Not a narrow-minded freak 74.725 70.988Not authoritative 74.325 71.647Continues education 74.184 74.930Displays self-criticism 74.108 73.046Age irrelevant 73.994 2.506Pedagogically sound 73.906 74.380Does not compare pupils or classes 73.835 0.907Does not look down upon pupils 73.595 1.524Creative 73.583 72.351Flexible 73.528 73.205Sensitive for pupils’ needs 73.515 71.078Socially competent 73.338 70.640Clear 73.222 72.091Motivates pupils 72.674 73.817Takes pupils’ understanding seriously 72.566 0.087Invests a lot of effort 72.409 72.806Plans work 72.399 72.789Has a lot of experience 72.397 0.934Enthusiastic 72.348 0.084Keeps up with the times 72.187 1.264Shows respect 72.152 0.329Takes time to listen and to pay attention 72.103 70.070Gradings reflect pupils’ abilities 71.973 0.924Creates positive work climate 71.889 70.672Does not vent his mood on pupils 71.865 2.638



Maintains good contact with parents 71.669 73.994Does not distract pupils 71.446 70.217Helps with problems 71.415 0.149Shows interest in people 71.393 71.964Young teacher 71.328 2.926Example for pupils 71.304 70.546Fair 71.241 70.706Is allowed to show preferences among pupils 71.220 70.609Is reliable 71.208 71.671Is available for non-school problems 71.183 0.285No sexual harassments 71.162 0.931A good story teller 71.136 71.426Accurate 71.056 71.491Control because of interest 70.965 0.358Makes rules 70.846 72.399Maintains order 70.807 1.398Not spending too much time on marking 70.778 70.272Patience 70.740 70.380Didactically sound 70.731 1.113Distributes tasks among pupils 70.611 70.293Stable 70.554 71.035Not verbally aggressive 70.545 0.875Friendly towards pupils 70.513 70.551Sociable, pleasant 70.512 1.873Respectful 70.466 1.178Encourages responsibility of pupils 70.363 0.630Rewarding 70.330 71.904Discussing sufficient subject matter 70.294 4.587Not working too hard 70.209 1.628Not severe 70.205 1.460Well groomed 70.021 0.068Not too much homework 0.047 2.920Not forbid too much 0.066 0.867Punishment 0.157 1.781Warns pupils in advance 0.184 3.248Not touchily 0.272 2.005Humorous 0.365 0.809Explanation 0.611 0.926Extra help for pupils who need support 0.669 70.044No bad temper 0.711 3.214Not too many or difficult lessons 0.733 3.336Organises nice things 0.750 74.520Makes pupils co-operate 0.778 4.558No physical punishments, aggression 0.835 70.311Not all assignments entail autonomous work 0.846 5.538Attending 0.925 75.346Handing conflicts 1.032 71.228Severe 1.270 72.010Sporting 1.348 71.786Well educated 1.687 73.925Serious 1.815 72.200



Not doing only nice, easy things 1.882 76.095Verbally competent 2.015 71.682Controlling if everyone understands 2.092 70.239A bit severe, if necessary 2.186 70.197Not too difficult, expecting too much 2.202 2.260Writing well 2.586 0.648Not too friendly 2.618 75.522Intelligent 2.700 73.299Helping slow learners 2.703 71.536Manners 2.739 72.175Nice 2.745 0.278Marking well 3.007 72.243Discussing mistakes 3.123 4.500Homework 3.728 2.364Telling nice stories 3.829 1.493Doing nice things 4.085 71.012Helps well 4.482 72.797Meticulous 4.488 75.143Careful 4.505 72.344Care of classroom 5.073 72.592All subjects matter + projects 7.006 72.130


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Students’ and teachers’ cognitions about good teachers