Teachers’ Emphases on General Educational Goals: a study of Norwegian teachers

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Teachers’ Emphases on GeneralEducational Goals: a study ofNorwegian teachersJan Helge Kallestad a & Dan Olweus aa Research Centre for Health Promotion (HEMIL) , Universityof Bergen , Christiesgate 15, N‐5015 Bergen, NorwayPublished online: 07 Jul 2006.

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Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 42, No. 3, 1998 257

Teachers' Emphases on GeneralEducational Goals: a study ofNorwegian teachersJAN HELGE KALLESTAD & DAN OLWEUSResearch Centre for Health Promotion (HEMIL), University of Bergen, Christiesgate15, N-5015 Bergen, Norway

ABSTRACT Teachers' emphases on six general educational goals were analysed in two differentsamples separated by two years. A majority of the teachers (about 80%) reported having a highemphasis on both school achievement and more social or developmental goals. Considerably lessemphasis was placed on social equalization and the goal of making the school 'a nice place tobe'. The results were very similar in both the samples, and they were fairly stable across the twotime points. Individual differences in teachers' goal emphases were not related to demographiccharacteristics such as age, sex and work experience. The results suggest that teachers' goalemphases are, to a considerable extent, the result of professional socialization. Further, severalclassroom characteristics were basically unrelated to individual differences in teachers' goalemphases. Some possible explanations of this lack of relationships are discussed. Two distinctmain profiles were identified, and we report some relationships between profile membership andclassroom characteristics for a subsample of teachers.

INTRODUCTION

General Educational Goals in Teachers' Professional Work

In educational policy we normally find many different general goals for teaching.Teachers are expected to work for students' progress in social development, skillsand knowledge, to encourage desirable attitudes among students and to ensure thattime in school is experienced positively. Such official goals are also stated inNorwegian educational policy, and they certainly contribute to the legitimization ofteachers' work in schools. Scheerens and others, have underlined that all educationalsystems must meet general societal demands and requirements (Little & McLaugh-lin, 1993; Scheerens, 1994). Such demands and requirements may be stated asofficial goals at different political and administrative levels.

It is by no means clear, however, to what extent national official goals inthemselves define teachers' work. Within a rational perspective it is assumed thatofficial goals lead to goal-directed teacher behaviour in schools. Contrary to this

0031-3831/98/030257-23 © 1998 Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research

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258 J. H. Kallestad & D. Olweus

perspective, it may be argued that official goals may represent ideals that are notreflected in daily decisions and activities. Concepts like 'garbage can' and 'loosecoupling' have been introduced to explain organizational behaviour that is notexpected from a rational perspective (cf. Baldridge & Deal, 1983). This develop-ment in organizational research has clearly been an important contribution to theunderstanding of schools, and it shows that teaching may be influenced by factorsoutside a rational perspective. Such a critique does not make rationality an irrelevantconcept, however.

Without some degree of rationality, it is probably impossible to govern schoolsby means of educational policy. We take it for granted that educational policy affectsschool quality at least to some extent (for a review of the literature on this point, see,for example, Rowan, 1990), and that educational goals are one of several means ineducational policy (see also Lagerweij & Voogt, 1990; Granheim & Petterson,1994). It is reasonable to assume, however, that teachers' actual goal commitmentwill to a considerable extent depend on the type of 'control mechanism' applied.

From a rational perspective, it is assumed that organizational managementensures goal-directed behaviour by using various control mechanisms (for example,Mintzberg, 1979, 1983; Lieberman & Miller, 1984). One type of control mechanismmay be standard rules, regulations and supervision. Such control mechanismstypically presuppose a clear technology. Other control mechanisms may focus uponoutput control (evaluation) and rewards. Use of such control mechanisms wouldseem to require that good results can be clearly defined and measured.

In the present context, it is natural to ask whether such control mechanisms aretypically used in educational policy. It has in fact been claimed (Dornbush & Scott,1975) that a lack of control mechanisms may be seen as being characteristic ofschools. It has been argued that control mechanisms are rare in schools becausethere is little knowledge about how to achieve 'good results' (unclear technology).The definition and measurement of results may as well be unclear and disputable(for example, Anderson, 1982; Feiman-Nemser & Floden, 1986; Hanson, 1991;Rosenholtz, 1989).

In the last decades, the traditional control mechanisms mentioned above havebeen supplemented by a stronger emphasis on norms and socialization. Such meansof management may as well be incorporated into a rational perspective as demon-strated by the concept of normative control. Mintzberg (1983) has seen normativecontrol as a result of socialization in accordance with organizations' official valuesand norms (see also Child, 1988).

It may be argued that normative control or socialization may be of particularimportance in teachers' work because the technology is unclear, the definition ofgood results is disputable, and the results are difficult to measure. Normative controlis also likely to be particularly relevant when authority is decentralized (Child,1988), and decentralization has been a general tendency in Western school policy(for example, Scheerens, 1994). Scheerens, among others, argues that the nationalbureaucratic control in Western education has been generally reduced in recentyears, and has been replaced by greater school autonomy and by a strengthening ofthe professional role of teachers.

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Teachers' Emphases on Educational Goals 259

Goal emphasis as an aspect of teachers' professional role

As mentioned above, the relative absence of control mechanisms may be seen astypical of schools and educational policy. This also probably implies that teachers'work in school is characterized by a substantial professional autonomy. Although allprofessional work implies a certain degree of autonomous flexibility (Rosenholtz &Simpson, 1990), there is considerable agreement that teachers' classroom work ischaracterized by a high degree of autonomy and even isolation (Lortie, 1975;Lagerweij & Voogt, 1990; Nias, 1990; Kirby et al., 1992). Also a Norwegian studyhas shown that teachers experience a high degree of autonomy in their classroomwork (Kallestad et al., 1998).

Against this background, it is important to investigate to what extent teachers' goalemphases vary between individual teachers, and how such differences may be related toindividual and organizational characteristics. Nias (1990) has argued, for example, thatteachers often learn to 'depend upon their own knowledge, interests and preferencesin making pedagogical and curriculum decisions' (see also Rosenholtz, 1989). Itmay be added that the tension between organizational and personal aspects ofteaching has been described as a pervasive theme in the literature on teaching(Feiman-Nemser & Floden, 1986).

On the other hand, Rosenholtz (1989) has underlined that the potential chaosof individual preferences may be minimized through socialization. Norms for whatshould be emphasized in teaching may be viewed as a result of socialization in aprofessional community (Kirby et al., 1992; Little & McLaughlin, 1993; Rosenholtz,1989; Virgilio et al., 1991).

It should be noted, however, that the concept of 'professional community' mayrefer to different contexts, as outlined by Little & McLaughlin (1993). Theseauthors have pointed out that teachers associate with colleagues in many settingsand circumstances, which they have referred to as 'different locations and occasionsof community'. In line with this reasoning they have argued that research has tendedto overemphasize the local school as a site of professional community and hasignored teachers' membership of external collegial groups (cf. Rosenholtz &Simpson, 1990). Many factors may contribute to teacher socialization into a com-mon professional community. All the teachers on which the study is based hadexperienced the same or similar professional training, and they all worked in thesame national school system within a small country. The official Norwegian schoolsystem is based on a common national policy, and comprises about 95% ofNorway's students. It is likely that Norwegian teachers are members of the sameteacher organization (union) (Telhaug, 1992), that they read the same journals andthat they were offered roughly the same training courses. The principals of theirschools probably participated in the same regional and national conferences, which,in turn, may have had a certain influence on the teachers.

The present study focus on teachers' goal emphases, which may be regarded asan aspect of a possible professional teacher role. It should be noted, however, thatthe professional community is not necessarily homogeneous, and, consequently,teachers may be socialized into several different teacher roles. This alternative

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theoretical viewpoint will also be explored. Teachers may even be socialized intolocal roles within each school, but school-level analyses will not be reported in thepresent study (but see Kallestad & Olweus, 1998).

Brief Overview of the Following Report

The study is reported in four more sections. The first section presents the researchprocedure.

The second section gives a descriptive overview of the teacher group's generalgoal priorities at the two time points when they were reported, time 1 and time 2,respectively.

Additional analyses in the next section focus on the individual teachers' totalpattern (ranking) of scores or goal profiles, consisting of six variables, in contrastwith a more limited focus on individual goal variables. The analyses concentrate onthe similarity of individual teacher profiles within a single time point, and also on thesimilarity of teacher profiles (stability in ranking) across time points (for a sub-sample). In this section we also describe two characteristic goal profiles (mainprofiles) at the teacher level.

Finally, the fourth section examines to what extent teachers' goal emphases wasrelated to their individual background characteristics and to classroom characteris-tics such as the classroom climate and student satisfaction with school life.

More specific research questions are listed in each of the four sections. Method,results and short comments are also presented for each section. We close our reportwith a summary discussion of some of the main issues in this study.

PROCEDURE

Design and Subjects

This study is part of a large-scale, longitudinal project under the direction of thesecond author. The main focus of the project is on bully/victim problems in schooland, in particular, on the effects of a school-based anti-bullying intervention pro-gramme (the programme was implemented between time 1 and time 2, which aredefined below; see, for example, Olweus, 1991, 1992, 1993a,b, 1994).

It is based on the teachers belonging to a longitudinal core sample of 112classes. The core sample was drawn from 28 primary and 14 secondary (junior high)schools in Bergen (second largest town in Norway with some 200 000 inhabitants).

For certain purposes, this core sample was augmented with additional units; forexample, a number of extra teachers were selected from the relevant schools forinclusion in the present study. This additional sampling was partly initiated by thefact that the classes in the longitudinal design gradually left the original primaryschools (with the transition to secondary schools), and partly because it wasdesirable to have a larger number of teachers in the samples.

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Those who are not familiar with the Norwegian school system should know thatGrades 1-6 constitute the primary/elementary level, whereas Grades 7-9 are re-ferred to as the junior high school or secondary level. The modal age for students inGrade 1 is seven years old.

In the present study we analysed data from two time points, referred to as time1 (October, 1983) and time 2 (May, 1985). The two samples consisted of 144 (time1) and 157 (time 2) teachers in Grades 4-8. These samples represented twoindependent groups of teachers sampled from the same schools. Data were alsoavailable for 35 teachers who participated at both time points (at time 1, they werepart of the core sample, and they happened to be selected as extra teachers at time2). These 35 teachers were primarily used for some longitudinal analyses. All of theteachers included in the study were responsible for a majority of the lessons taughtin their respective classes (on average 19 and 16 lessons per week, at times 1 and 2,respectively).

In a few analyses (the Educational Goals and Teacher and Classroom Charac-teristics section), we also used data from students in the core sample (about 2500students from 91 classes). These data were collected six months after time 1.

The school system in Bergen does not deviate markedly from the school systemin the other 'town communities' of Norway, and, accordingly, the samples ofteachers and students used in the present study should be at least broadly represen-tative of the relevant populations in other town communities of Norway.

Educational Goal Variables

Data were collected using several questionnaires designed by the second author.For the purposes of this study, the teachers were requested to indicate howmuch emphasis they placed on each of six general educational goals in theirteaching and daily interaction with the students in their main classes. These goalswere:

personality: to help students develop their personality;nice place: to make the school a nice place to be;right/wrong: to help students distinguish between right and wrong;school achievement: to teach the students useful knowledge and academic

skills;social equalization: to work for social equalization among students;appropriate behaviour: to help students learn appropriate behaviour and

order;

The teachers were asked to give their answers on a six-point Likert scale rangingfrom 'extremely important' (6) to 'not important at all' (1). To avoid possibleclustering of the responses at the positive end of the scale (cf., for example, Teddlie& Stringfield, 1993), the instructions gently encouraged the teachers to be discrim-inating in assessing the various goals.

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262 J. H. Kalkstad & D. Olweus

TABLH I. Descriptive overview of teachers' goal emphases at two time points

Timepoint

Time 1

Time 2

Good emphasis

Personality

Nice place

Right/wrong

School achievement

Social equalization

Appropriate behaviour

Personality

Nice place

Right/wrong

School achievement

Social equalization


Minimum

2

2

3

31

3

31

3

3

2

3

Maximum

6

6

6

6

6

6

6

6

6

6

6

6

Mean

4.693.994.844.653.854.87

4.703.994.984.884.164.86

SD

1.000.920.800.881.050.80

0.830.980.820.760.990.82

n

143

143

142

142

139

143

152

152

150

152

150

152

The six goal variables of the present study should be viewed as core values orgoals in Norwegian educational policy (cf. Kirke-og undervisningsdepartmentet,1974; Tveiten & Bergem, 1989), and they are clearly relevant for education ingeneral. In international research, similar educational goals have been investigated,for example, in studies by Mortimore et al. (1988) and by Pallas (1988). TheInternational Education Indicator Project (INES) of the Organization for EconomicCo-operation and Development (OECD) has also used similar goal variables(Granheim & Pettersson, 1994).

TEACHERS' OVERALL EMPHASIS ON EDUCATIONAL GOALS

The issues 'What was the overall pattern of goal emphasis for the teacher group asa whole?' 'Which of the goals were more and less emphasized?' and 'What were therelationships among the goal variables? are addressed in this section.

Overall Pattern of Teachers' Emphasis on Educational Goals

A descriptive overview of the teachers' goal priorities at time 1 and time 2 isdisplayed in Table I (see also Fig. 1). Table I shows that the teachers' responsescovered the full range of the six-point scale (the minimum and maximum values),but the scores were mainly in the upper half of the scale, as is evident from the meanvalues and the standard deviations. When we focused on the four goals with thehighest means (personality, right/wrong, school achievement and appropriate behaviour)we found that about 80% of the teachers (at both time points) had a score of 4 orhigher (indicating 'important', 'very important' and 'extremely important') for thesefour goals.

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Q.

HI

0

• Timel (n=142)

oTime2(n=151)

Personality Nice place Right/wrong School Social Appropriateachievement equalization behaviour

FIG. 1. Teachers' goal profiles (aggregated) at time 1 and time 2.

The lower part of the scale was used, in particular, for nice place and socialequalization. About 50% of the teachers (at both time points) had at least one score(out of six) in the lower part of the scale (3 or lower). In spite of the general trendtowards clustering of the answers at the positive end of the scales, there was thus agood deal of variation as well.

The mean scores for the various goals were generally quite similar at the twotime points. Taking means of the means of the scores for each goal across thetwo measurement occasions, we found that right/wrong and appropriate behaviourhad the highest overall scores (mean scores of 4.91 and 4.87, respectively). Schoolachievement and personality also had quite a high priority (4.77 and 4.70),whereas social equalization and nice place were considered clearly less important(4.01 and 3.99).

Analysis of variance (ANOVA) analyses combined with the Scheffe multiple-comparison test confirmed that there were two distinct groups or clusters of goalvariables, one consisting of right/wrong, appropriate behaviour, school achievement andpersonality, and the other of social equalization and nice place. The differences betweenthe two clusters were highly significant at both time points (p < 0.001). The averagedifferences were very marked, with goals in the higher group lying approximately awhole standard deviation above the means for the less emphasized goals. At thesame time, the mean differences among the goals within each cluster were generallyquite small and non-significant.

Our study shows then that teachers gave very high priority to goals such asappropriate behaviour and right/wrong. This result is of considerable interest, sinceresearch has shown that a safe and orderly school climate is an important factor forboth students' learning and social development. Such a school climate incorporates

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a positive classroom climate with minimal disruptiveness and appropriate socialbehaviour (for a review see, for example, Wang & Walberg, 1991).

In the public debate teachers are frequently criticized for not paying attentionto behavioural problems and diffusion of social norms (for right/wrong). This critiquewould not seem to be justified, judging from the teachers' high emphasis onappropriate behaviour and right/wrong in our study.

Researchers have reported that classroom lessons sometimes may be moreoriented towards control than learning (Blase, 1986; Rosenholtz, 1989). Our studygives no support for such a view. On average, we found only small and non-significant differences between the teachers' emphasis on appropriate behaviour andright/wrong, on the one hand, and school achievement on the other.

As mentioned, schools have both academic, social and developmental goals. Inour study we found that school achievement was given roughly the same emphasis aspersonality, right/wrong and appropriate behaviour. Also, a majority of the teachers(about 80%) gave a high priority to both learning and social or developmental goals.This result is also in line with the findings of Mortimore et al. (1988), whoconcluded that very few teachers restricted themselves to just one type of goal(Mortimore et al., 1988, p. 55).

The teachers emphasized nice place clearly less than school achievement, however.This result may indicate that the teachers were characterized by a 'serious' ornon-playful attitude towards their tasks; to make the school a nice place wasobviously considered a less important goal than achieving academic and social/devel-opmental goals. The fairly low emphasis on nice place should not necessarily beinterpreted to mean, however, that the teachers were indifferent with regard to theirstudents' wellbeing. The teachers may well be of the opinion that satisfaction withschool life is to a large extent a consequence of the realization of the goals they puta strong emphasis on. In this context it may also be mentioned that Hargreaves(1994, pp. 146-147) has cautioned against an overemphasis on caring in schools,whereas he sees care balanced with other goals as positive for both climate andachievement.

Note also that the teachers did not appear to see social equalization among thestudents as one of the more important goals in education. This result should be seenin a Norwegian context, where equality is a high-priority value, at least in the officialeducational policy (for example, Telhaug, 1982). It should also be noted that socialequalization is a goal of somewhat different character than the five other goals.

Equalization of social differences among students may be seen as a complexprocess mainly outside the control of the classroom and individual teachers. Thismay partly explain the teachers' relatively low emphasis on this dimension.

It is worth stressing that the overall results obtained at the two time points werevery similar, in spite of the fact that they were derived from two completelyindependent samples of teachers. With regard to the group-aggregated data, therewas thus a considerable degree of consistency in the findings across the time pointsand samples. (A statistical measure of this similarity is given in the next section.) Towhat extent these regularities conceal important individual differences among teach-ers, when the data are disaggregated, is explored in subsequent sections.

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TABLE II. Intercorrelations among goal variables at the teacher level at two time points

VariableTimepoint Variable 1 2 3 4 5 6

Time 1(n= 143)

Time 2(n= 149)

12

3

4

56

1

2

3

4

5

6

—0.03

-0 .06- 0 . 0 9

0.33**- 0 . 1 7

_

0.22*0.10

- 0 . 0 80.180.13

-

- 0 . 0 3- 0.27*- 0 . 0 3

0.00

-

0.08- 0.10

0.20- 0 . 0 0

-

0.130.060.43**

-

0.190.170.38**

-

- 0.110.25

-

0.060.26^

- 0.16

0.12

Variables 1-6 are: personality, nice place, right/wrong, school achievement, social equalization, and

appropriate behaviour, respectively.

*/>< 0.01, **/>< 0.001.

Relationships among Educational Goal Variables

Generally, we expected the six goal variables to represent relatively different educa-tional values, implying that a correlation analysis would not show strong relation-ships among the goal variables.

Possible negative correlations among goal variables may raise a different issue.A clear negative relationship shows that a high emphasis on one goal is associatedwith a low emphasis on another goal for a certain group of teachers and that adifferent group has the opposite configuration. Such a result would indicate that thesample contains relatively large groups of teachers with opposite patterns of goalemphasis, which in turn may suggest conflicting educational ideologies or valuesamong the teachers. From this perspective we may pay particular attention to therelationships between school achievement and the more social or developmental goals.This relationship is particularly interesting in view of the public debate, in which itis sometimes argued that certain schools emphasize achievement at the cost of moresocial and developmental goals.

Table II reports the intercorrelations among the goal variables separately fortime 1 and time 2 (Pearson r). The correlation analyses were also conducted withgrade level partialled out (partial correlations), but the results were roughly thesame.

The fairly low correlations for the majority of variable combinations indicatethat the goals studied represent fairly different values, as expected. Some of therelationships, however, were significant and merit some comment.

The strongest relationship was found between emphasis on appropriate behav-iour and right/wrong, with correlations of 0.43 at time 1 and 0.38 at time 2. Bothgoals seem to represent social guidelines and rules, and from this viewpoint the

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positive relationship is not surprising. On the other hand, the correlations were notvery high, so there are no grounds for assuming that the two goals measure more orless the same thing. It is likely that right/wrong reflects a moral dimension to a greaterextent than appropriate behaviour.

A clearly positive, but moderate relationship was also found between emphasison appropriate behaviour and school achievement, at both time points (r = 0.25 and0.26, respectively). That is, teachers who emphasized order and appropriate behav-iour in their daily work with students tended to value academic achievement as well.This positive relationship may signify that, in the teachers' view, teaching studentsacademic knowledge and skills effectively presupposes a certain order and disciplinein the classroom.

Generally, Table II shows only weak negative relationships. As mentionedabove, we were particularly concerned about possibly negative correlations betweenschool achievement and other goal variables. We actually found a negative relationshipbetween emphasis on school achievement and nice place, although the correlation attime 2 (r = — 0.10) was clearly weaker than at time 1 (r = — 0.27). However, othercorrelations with school achievement were generally weak and went in both positiveand negative directions. Overall, the correlations in Table II do not suggestmarkedly conflicting educational values or ideologies. These results should also beseen in the context of the analyses reported in Table I, showing that a large majorityof teachers gave a high priority to academic, social and developmental goals (see alsop. 274).

TEACHERS' GOAL PROFILES

It may be argued (Newfield & Shinha, 1985) that a teacher's score for an individualgoal variable provides relatively limited information because it does not take intoaccount the teacher's scores on the other five goals. With this in mind, the focus inthis section is shifted from individual goal variables to the whole pattern of scores orthe goal profile consisting of all six variables. This approach provides more complexinformation about the teachers' goal emphasis.

The analyses of teachers' goal profiles address the following research questions:(1) how stable were the teacher profiles from one time point to another;(2) how similar were the individual teacher profiles at each time point; and(3) was it possible to identify distinct main profiles?One way of analyzing a set of profiles is to use Kendall's coefficient of

concordance (referred to as Kendall's coefficient in the following). This coefficientis a measure of the mean rank correlation among two or more raters in their rankingof a set of variables (educational goals). In the present case, we thus get an estimateof the average similarity in teachers' goal profiles (independent of the absolute levelof the individual profiles). Kendall's coefficient ranges from 0 to 1 where 0 repre-sents no agreement and 1 represents perfect agreement on the ranking of thevariables/goals for the group of raters (see, for example, Siegel, 1956). Thisapproach has been used, for example, by Pallas (1988) in an analysis of goalconsensus in US high schools (see also Rutter et al., 1979).

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Stability in Teacher Profiles Across Two Time Points

In examining the similarity in profiles across different time points, one may thinkabout this in terms of the stability in teacher profiles. Stability is investigated in twodifferent ways in the present section. First, the similarity in teacher profiles acrosstime for the teacher group as a whole (aggregated data) is studied, and, secondly, thesimilarity of individual teacher profiles. The latter analysis is restricted to thesubsample of teachers who participated at both time 1 and time 2.

Table I shows the mean scores for the six goal variables at the two time points,and Kendall's coefficient for the ranked profiles was estimated at 0.83 (the Pearsoncorrelation for the non-ranked profiles was 0.95). Comparison of the mean scoresfor individual variables at the two time points underscores the basic similarity of thetwo profiles. Independent r-tests showed that, in spite of the relatively large samplesizes, only two of the six goal variables had significantly different mean scores (schoolachievement and social equalization) at the two time points.

In general, we conclude that the two mean profiles were very similar, in spite ofthe fact that they referred to different time points and were derived from completelyindependent samples.

Analyses of stability in individual profiles between time 1 and time 2 were, ofnecessity, restricted to the 35 teachers who participated at both time points.Kendall's coefficient was calculated for each individual teacher and then a mean wastaken across the whole sample of teachers. The average estimate amounted to 0.74.Also in this case, inspection of the mean values for individual goal variables revealedsmall differences between the time points. Paired f-tests showed that the meanscores were not significantly different across the two time points for any of the sixgoal variables. The results from these analyses are in very good agreement with thefindings for the aggregated data.

Our results show, then, that there was a high degree of stability in the teachers'goal profiles over a time period of two years, both for aggregated data from differentsamples of teachers and for individual data derived from the same teachers at bothtime points. Obviously, there was a substantial degree of consensus among teachers,across samples and time points, about which goals should be given high or lowemphasis.

So far the general stability of goal profiles has been examined without assessingthe relative homogeneity in teachers' goal emphasis within each time point. Thelatter issue will now be explored.

How Similar were the Individual Teacher Profiles at each Time Point?

Kendall's coefficient was used to calculate the degree of similarity among 138individual teacher profiles at time 1 (six teachers were excluded due to missingdata), and among 148 profiles at time 2 (nine teachers were excluded due to missingdata). The results were exactly the same at both time points, with relatively low, buthighly significant Kendall's coefficients of 0.20 (f- = 136.3, df = 5, p < 0.001 attime 1, and x2 = 146.8, df = 5, p < 0.001 at time 2). The results were quite similar

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for the profiles of the 35 teachers who participated at both time points (above). TheKendall coefficients for this subgroup were 0.31 and 0.28 at time 1 and time 2,respectively.

These findings indicate that, in spite of substantial profile similarity or stabilityover time, there was considerable variation among the teachers in their profiles orgoal priorities at a particular point in time.

Was it Possible to Identify Distinct Main Profiles?

These results raise the issue of whether the mean profiles actually consist of severaldistinct groups of profiles. To examine this issue, hierarchical cluster analysis wasused. Teachers were clustered by Wards minimum-variance method across the sixgoal variables. This method is designed to generate clusters in such a way as tominimize the within-cluster variance (for example, Hair et al., 1987).

In using this variant of cluster analyses, the number of clusters is specified bythe researcher. Several cluster solutions were inspected (at both time points) beforewe decided to further examine a four-cluster solution. This decision was also basedon analyses using multi-dimensional scaling (Schiffman, et al., 1981), graphicallyshowing the relationships among the clusters (several clusters from both timepoints). The four-cluster solution was, however, also assessed on the basis ofadditional statistical analyses and the tentative criteria outlined below.

In assessing the adequacy of a possible cluster solution, we applied the followingcriteria. First, the main profiles should be clearly different from each other. Sec-ondly, it should preferably be possible to reproduce the profiles across samples andtime points. Also, the main profiles should encompass a large portion or majority ofthe individuals included in the analysis. It was also considered a strength if profilemembership could be related to other variables in a meaningful way.

We argue that two of the clusters in the four-cluster solution (Table III) may beregarded as main profiles according to the three first criteria specified above and theanalyses reported below. The final criterion of meaningful relationships with othervariables is to some extent highlighted in the Education Goals and Teacher, andClassroom Characteristics section which follows, but this is mainly an issue forfuture research.

Table IV gives Pearson correlations among all the cluster mean profiles (aggre-gated data within clusters). As shown in Table IV, there were very high correlationsbetween Cluster 1-T1 and Cluster 2-T2 (r = 0.95), and also between Cluster 3-T1and Cluster 3-T2 (r = 97). As the labelling indicates, both correlations are based onone cluster from each time point (T1/T2). These two main profiles were thus clearlyreproduced across samples and time points. For simplicity, they were named theachievement profile and the nice-place profile (see also Fig. 2 below).

Table IV also informs us that the two main profiles correlated with each otherat a relatively low level at both time points (0.36 at T4 and 0.53 at T2), indicatingthat the clusters were relatively different. This issue was further examined bycomparing the mean scores on individual goal variables for the two main profiles

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TABLE III. Statistics for the four-cluster solution

'Kendall's coefficient of concordance.b l -6 represent the goal variables personality, nice place, right/wrong, school achievement, social equalization,and appropriate behaviour, respectively.

with independent r-tests (Hair et al., 1987, p. 315). The results presented in TableV confirm that the main profiles had significantly different mean scores on nice place,school achievement and social equalization at both time points. Finally, the two mainprofiles also encompassed a majority of the teachers both at time 1 and time 2 (87and 102 teachers, respectively).

The remarkably similar results for the two time points certainly support the ideathat we have identified two reproducible, largely distinct clusters of teachers (Cluster1-T1 and Cluster 3-1 at time 1, and Cluster 2-T2 and Cluster 3-T2 at time 2). Weconclude that these clusters can be regarded as main profiles according to ourcriteria (see Fig. 2).

TABLE IV.

Variables

Pearson correlations

1

among

2

aggregated

3

teacher clusters

Variables

4 5

at two time points

6

(Tl

7

and •1-2)

8

1. Cluster 1-T12. Cluster 2-T13. Cluster 3-T14. Cluster 4-T15. Cluster 1-T26. Cluster 2-T27. Cluster 3-T28. Cluster 4-T2

-- 0.16

0.360.660.690.950.460.20

-

- 0 . 1 6- 0.72

0.15- 0 . 4 0- 0 . 2 5

0.56

-

0.440.620.390.97

- 0 . 1 7

-

0.150.720.510.02

-

0.690.66

- 0 . 1 80.53

- 0 . 0 9-

' - 0.20'

Mean score on goal variables'1

Timepoint Profile n KCa 1 2 3 4 5 6

Tl All teachers-Tl 138 0.20 4.69 3.99 4.84 4.65 3.85 4.87Cluster 1-T1 40 0.60 5.02 3.50 5.00 5.60 3.78 5.18Cluster 2-T1 12 0.70 5.92 4.00 3.92 4.08 5.33 3.75Cluster 3-T1 47 0.33 4.81 4.32 5.23 4.15 4.32 5.06Cluster 4-T1 39 0.31 3.87 4.05 4.44 4.46 2.92 4.69

T2 All teachers-T2 148 0.20 4.70 3.99 4.98 4.88 . 4.16 4.86Cluster 1-T2 15 0.45 5.60 4.27 5.87 5.40 5.47 5.73Cluster 2-T2 60 0.54 4.35 3.45 5.07 5.37 3.75 5.02Cluster 3-T2 42 0.26 4.79 4.40 5.31 4.43 4.40 4.95Cluster 4-T2 31 0.18 4.81 4.29 3.97 4.32 3.94 4.00

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TABLE V. Differences between the achievement profile and nice-place profile attwo time points (independent Mests) for six variables

Variables

Personality

Nice place

Right/wrong

School achievement

Social equalization


Time

t

1.31- 5 . 6 8- 1.5412.30

- 3.260.75

1

P

0.1940.0000.1270.0000.0020.457

Time

t

- 2 . 9 3- 5.41- 1.89

8.21- 3.70

0.45

2

P

0.0040.0000.0610.0000.0000.655

The achievement profile seems to be a variant of the mean profile (see Fig. 1),whereas the nice-place profile had a generally flatter shape. The chief differencesbetween the two profiles were, as indicated above, that the achievement profile hada clearly higher score on school achievement, and a lower score on nice place and socialequalization (Table V).

EDUCATIONAL GOALSCHARACTERISTICS

AND TEACHER AND CLASSROOM

In this section the following questions are addressed:

1. Was the individual teacher's goal emphasis related to his or her backgroundcharacteristics?

_ School-achievement profile

0

- Timel (n = 40) - - • • - T i m e 1 (n = 47)

— Time 2 (n = 42) —o— Time 2 (n = 60)

Personality Nice place Right/wrong School Social Appropriateachievement equalization behaviour

FIG. 2. Two main profiles (both main profiles at time 1 and time 2).

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TABLE VI. Pearson correlations between goal priority and teacher characteristics (n = 142)

Teacher Goal variables3

characteristicvariables 1 2 3 4 5 6 Profile11

Teacher's sexc 0.01 0.12 0.12 0.04 - 0 . 0 5 0.10 - 0 . 0 3Teacher's age -0 .04 - 0 . 0 8 0.19* - 0 . 0 4 - 0 . 0 9 0.09 - 0 . 0 6Employment" 0.03 0.11 - 0 . 0 9 - 0 . 1 5 0.02 - 0 . 0 7 0.19Education' 0.06 - 0.06 - 0.04 0.06 0.07 - 0.13 0.02Experience' - 0 . 0 2 - 0 . 0 9 0.09 0.00 - 0 . 1 7 * 0.12 - 0 . 1 3Service8 - 0 . 1 1 - 0 . 0 5 0.09 0.02 - 0 . 0 4 0.09 - 0 . 1 1Timeh - 0.03 0.27** - 0.05 - 0.04 - 0.15 0.07 - 0.03

*p< 0.05; **p< 0.01."The goal variables 1-6 denote personality, nice place, right/wrong, school achievement, social equalization,

and appropriate behaviour, respectively.

"The analyses reported under profile were based on 87 teachers (see Fig. 2). The achievement profile iscoded as 1 and the nice-place profile as 2.cMales were coded as 0 and females as 1.dThe type of employment was coded 0 for permanent appointment and 1 for temporary.'Years of teacher education.fVears of teacher experience.sYears of service at the current school.hThe number of lessons taught per week.

2. Was the individual teacher's goal emphasis related to classroom characteris-tics?

These issues were pursued by analyses of both individual goal variables and mainprofiles. Part of the analyses may also be seen as an effort to validate the two mainprofiles by relating the teachers' cluster membership to other variables. The analyseswere performed only on data from time 1.

Teachers' Goal Emphases and Teachers' Characteristics

Table VI presents the results from a correlation analysis between teachers' goalemphasis and various teacher characteristics, most of them demographic variables.The highest correlation (r = 0.27) was found between teachers' emphasis on niceplace and time in class (number of lessons taught per week by teacher). Thisrelationship, however, turned out to be mainly a consequence of the fact thatteachers in lower grades spend more time in their classes than teachers in highergrades. A partial correlation controlling for grade level showed a correlation of only0.03 for the two variables concerned.

Generally, the relationships in Table VI were quite weak. Among the results, itmay be noted that teachers' emphasis on individual goals was not related to teachers'sex. Nor were teachers' goal emphases related to their age, even though olderteachers tended to emphasize right/wrong slightly more than younger teachers.

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Similarly, teachers' goal emphases were largely unrelated to their years of educationand their type of employment (ordinary/temporary).

The correlations between goal variables and teachers' work experience (theteacher-characteristic variable 'Experience' in Table VI, that is, the number of yearsas a teacher) in Table VI can highlight whether teachers' goal emphases are relatedto a teacher's career development (cf. Feiman-Nemser & Floden, 1986, pp. 521-522). Such a perspective is used by Rosenholtz & Simpson (1990), when they arguethat managing students' behaviour is a particularly important task early in ateacher's career. According to this argument, one would expect a negative relation-ship between the teacher-experience variable (Experience) and emphasis on appro-priate behaviour. There was no support for this assumption in Table VI, where therelevant correlation coefficient (r = 0.12) is both weak and positive.

The general lack of sizable relationships was also prominent when we inspectedcorrelations between teacher characteristics and profile membership (restricted tothe 87 teachers belonging to the achievement profile and the nice place profile at time1). Obviously, the two clusters of teachers were not very different with regard to theteacher characteristics examined in Table VI.

Teachers' Goal Emphases and Classroom Characteristics

Individual differences in teachers' goal emphasis as well as profile membership mayalso be related to various 'classroom characteristics'. In this study, the classroomcharacteristics examined include grade level and various dimensions of students'school motivation, antisocial behaviour, peer relations, self-esteem and satisfactionwith school life (see Table VII). Such dimensions may reflect various aspects ofclassroom climate as well as the quality of school life in general.

Most of the dimensions of classroom characteristics were based on data fromstudents, collected (in the same academic year but) six months after data wereobtained from the teachers (at time 1). For the present analyses, the student datawere aggregated across classes. For three of the classroom dimensions, data wereavailable from the teachers as well {discipline, motivation and relations in Table VII).

Table VII shows a substantial negative correlation between grade level andteachers' emphasis on nice place (r = —0.43). Emphasis on nice place is alsomoderately and significantly related to students' antisocial behaviour (r = — 0.25)and their satisfaction with school life (r = 0.24). Both of these relationshipsapproached zero, however, when grade level was partialled out. To make school 'anice place to be' is obviously and understandably considered by the teachers to bea relatively more important task in lower grades where also student satisfaction withschool life is higher and antisocial behaviour less frequent.

From a general theoretical perspective, it might possibly be expected thatteachers' emphasis on appropriate behaviour should result in less discipline problemsin the classroom {discipline). This expectation was not borne out by our findings(Table VII). The correlation between these two variables was basically zero, whetherthe discipline variable was assessed by the teachers (r = — 0.02) or the students( r= -0 .07) .

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TABLE VII. Pearsons correlations between teachers' goal emphases and classroom characteristics(n = 144)

Classroom Goal variables"characteristicvariables 1 2 3 4 5 6 Profile15

Grade level 0.09 -0 .43** 0.09 0.11 0.09 0.03 - 0 . 1 3Teacher satisfaction0 0.01 0.17* 0.12 - 0 . 0 1 - 0 . 0 1 - 0 . 0 2 - 0 . 0 7Discipline11 - 0 . 0 8 - 0 . 0 5 - 0 . 0 3 - 0 . 1 0 0.04 - 0 . 0 2 0.19Motivation 0.06 - 0.15 - 0.01 0.06 0.00 0.05 - 0.05Relationsf 0.08 0.18* 0.09 0.09 - 0.02 0.05 - 0.02

Student data aggregated on classes (n = 91)Discipline" - 0 . 1 7 - 0 . 1 4 0.09 - 0 . 1 3 - 0 . 1 3 - 0 . 0 7 0.27*Motivation11 - 0 . 1 3 -0 .18 0.10 - 0 . 0 0 -0 .14 0.20 0.19Relations' 0.01 -0 .19 0.13 - 0 . 0 7 - 0 . 0 2 0.17 0.23Teacher8 - 0 . 10 - 0 . 1 7 0.02 - 0 . 1 1 - 0 . 2 1 - 0 . 0 8 0.23Behaviour11 - 0.04 - 0.25* 0.07 - 0.09 0.06 0.12 0.23Self-esteem1 0.10 0.16 0.03 - 0 . 0 9 0.07 0.07 0.29*Satisfaction' - 0.04 0.24* - 0.15 0.04 - 0.00 - 0.17 - 0.20Bullyingk - 0.01 0.10 - 0.03 - 0.04 0.00 0.07 0.34**

*p< 0.05; **p< 0.01."Goal variables 1-6 denote personality, nice place, right/wrong, school achievement, social equalization,and appropriate behaviour, respectively.'The analyses reported under profile include 87 teachers (see Fig. 2), and student data were availablefor 56 of these 87 classes. The achievement profile is coded as 1 and the nice place profile as 2.Teachers' satisfaction with classroom work was measured on a six-point scale.dTeachers' perceptions of, and students' reports on, classroom discipline measured by an indexconsisting of six items (Manger & Olweus, 1997). A high score indicates greater discipline problems.Teachers' perceptions of, and students' reports on, school motivation measured by an indexconsisting of six items (Manger & Olweus, 1997). A high score indicates lower motivation.Teachers' perceptions of, and students' reports on, peer relations in the class measured by an indexconsisting of five items (Manger & Olweus, 1997). A high score indicates less positive relations.gStudents' attitude and relation to the teacher, measured by an index of six items (Manger & Olweus,1997). A high score indicates a negative attitude to the teacher.hStudents' antisocial behaviour measured by an index consisting of 17 items (Olweus, 1989). A highscore indicates a high level of antisocial behaviour.'Students' global negative self-esteem, measured by an index of six items (Alsaker & Olweus, 1992).A high score indicates a more negative self-evaluation.'Students' general satisfaction with school life measured by an index consisting of four items. A highscore indicates more satisfaction with school life.kStudents' reports on the level of being bullied, measured by two items (see, for example, Olweus,1991). A high score indicates a high level of victimization.

Attention may be drawn to the weak relationship between students' self-reported self-esteem and teachers' emphasis on developing students' personality(r = 0.10). Finally, judging from the results in Table VII one should not expect ateacher's emphasis on school achievement to result in better school motivation amonghis or her students.

The last column in Table VII shows, however, that the two goal profiles were

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correlated with several classroom characteristics. Classrooms with the main teacherbelonging to the achievement profile had higher scores on classroom-climate dimen-sions, whereas classes with teachers from the other cluster had more disciplineproblems and social problems such as low self-esteem and bullying. These resultsshould be viewed with some caution, however, since they were based on data fromonly 56 classes and teachers (with valid data), which represents a considerablerestriction of the group of 87 teachers belonging to the original two main profiles atTime 1.

SUMMARY DISCUSSION

Since the results have been commented on in each section, the following willconcentrate on some main issues in our study.

One of our aims was to give an overall description of the teachers' relativeemphasis on six core educational goals. We repeat from the Teachers' OverallEmphasis on Educational Goals section that the six goal variables could naturally bedivided into two distinct groups with four and two variables in each. Personality,right/wrong, school achievement and appropriate behaviour were clearly the goals moststrongly emphasized by the teachers, whereas considerably less emphasis was placedon nice place and social equalization.

This result shows that both academic and social/developmental goals werestrongly emphasized by the teachers. Several researchers have focused on .this issue,and national differences have been reported. Results indicate that emphasis onacademic and social/developmental goals is rather balanced in the UK and in theUSA, whereas countries like France and Israel seem to be particularly concernedwith academic learning (Rich, 1993; Hargreaves, 1994). In this regard, our studyplaces Norway in a group with countries like the USA and the UK. Our resultssuggest that this tendency is even stronger in Norway than in UK (cf. Mortimore etal., 1988, p. 55).

On average, appropriate behaviour and right/wrong were the goals that receivedthe highest scores by the teachers (though not significantly higher that the othergoals in the high-priority group). The very high emphasis on these goals is consistentwith several school studies where teachers have been found to place strong emphasison proper student and classroom control. It has been proposed that such goals areparticularly emphasized because a good reputation among colleagues is consideredto be largely dependent on proper classroom control (for example, Lortie, 1975;Hoy & Rees, 1977; Blase, 1986; Rosenholtz, 1989). Our findings and the researchreferred to above suggest that proper classroom control is an important aspect of aprofessional teacher role in many national school systems. . •

The results in the Teachers' Overall Emphasis on Educational Goals sectionalso highlight teachers' general commitment to official goals in our national schoolpolicy. In the present study, the teacher group reported relatively high scores on allgoal variables, and almost 80% gave high priority to four of the six goals. This resultsuggests that teachers as a group had a high commitment to the official goalsexamined. It is a policy question whether the emphasis on nice place and socialequalization is critically low with regard to the stated official goals. These results may

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deserve particular attention because there is very limited knowledge about teachers'ideological and pedagogical commitment (Lawn & Grace, 1990). The most relevantNorwegian study may be the MIR-Project where 71 teachers were studied in 1980(Tveiten & Bergem, 1989).

The teachers' high commitment to official goals may be interpreted as a resultof a professional socialization which supports official educational policy. Theoreti-cally, this interpretation may suggest that the state 'controls' the teachers' relativelyautonomous work situation through professional socialization or 'normative control'(see p. 258). In organizational terms, we may conclude that official goals seemed tobe close to operative goals with regard to teachers' classroom work (Perrow, 1961).

Other results may also be seen as an indication of a professional socialization ofthe teachers. For example it was found that the teachers' average goal emphasis wasalmost identical in two different samples of teachers, measured two years apart. Thishigh degree of similarity in mean profiles suggests that the teachers' goal emphasiswas guided by general norms for classroom work. It is important to bear in mind,however, that the description of the general goal profiles (see Fig. 1) was based onaggregated data. The study showed that different patterns of goal emphasisemerged, when analyses of individual teacher profiles were performed.

Analysing the teachers' goal profiles, we found that they ranked the goals ratherdifferently (a Kendall coefficient of only 0.20 at both time points), a result whichinvited to cluster analysis. In these analyses, two meaningful main profiles or clustersof teachers were identified, which were named the achievement profile and thenice-place profile. We assessed these profiles as meaningful because they weresignificantly different from each other (particularly on school achievement and niceplace), they were found at both time points and they included a majority of theteachers.

Profile membership (based on a reduced sample, see p. 274) was related toseveral classroom characteristics as shown in Table VII. In particular, classes withteachers belonging to the nice place cluster had less positive characteristics, includingmore student social problems and a less positive classroom climate. Of course, ourdata do not permit any strong conclusions with regard to cause-effect relationships,but the results overall suggest that a profile approach may sometimes reveal relation-ships that are not immediately apparent when individual variables are examined.Research along these lines seems to merit more attention in the future.

This tentative conclusion certainly does not imply that research involving single,'isolated' variables is not valuable or counterproductive. Such an approach is usuallya first natural step in the research process and will often suffice to reveal the keyrelationships of interest. In the present study, the generally low consensus among theteachers in ranking the goal variables clearly suggests that individual differences ingoal emphasis should be given detailed consideration. Were such individual differ-ences related to demographic teacher characteristics such as sex, age and years ofwork experience? Were they associated with classroom characteristics like disciplineproblems and student satisfaction with school life? Did the pattern of results suggestthat the teacher's relative emphasis on certain goals had certain 'effects' on thestudents in the class? All of these questions are certainly of interest and wereexamined in the previous section of our paper.

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Generally, we found very weak or basically zero relationships were foundbetween individual differences in goal emphasis and demographic teacher character-istics. The fact that the teachers' goal priorities were largely unrelated to teachers'age, sex, work experience and similar variables suggests to us that professionalsocialization is a more important source of influence in this regard than experiencesrelated to the teachers' demographic characteristics.

Overall, individual differences in teachers' goal emphasis were also very weaklyrelated to the various classroom characteristics included in the study. This resultsuggests that such differences played a minor role or no role at all in affectingstudents' behaviour (as a group), at least in the form of simple cause-effectrelationships. Before drawing such a conclusion, however, it may be useful toconsider possible explanations for this lack of relationship, which was somewhatsurprising to us.

First, it is of course possible that the teachers' reports of their goal emphasis waslargely 'rhetorical', an expression of what they felt was expected from them andsomething which had little to do with their everyday work in the classroom. If thiswere the case, the lack of relationship is of course not very surprising. However, inview of the considerable consistency in a number of our findings, we think this canbe no more than a small part of the explanation. None the less, it would certainlybe interesting to supplement our self-reports of goal emphasis with detailedmeasurement of the teachers' actual classroom practice. This would help reveal howemphasis on a particular goal is possibly translated into practical operations and howsuch practice might affect student behaviour.

Secondly, the absence of relationships could also in part be a consequence ofwhat might be called 'opposite strategies'. By this expression we mean that someteachers may have emphasized a particular goal for one reason, while other teachersemphasized the same goal for a somewhat different reason. For example, a con-trolling and effective teacher may have put a strong emphasis on appropriatebehaviour for a long time which has resulted in few discipline problems in the class.Another, less efficient teacher may see 'appropriate behaviour' as a very desirablegoal because of a current classroom situation with marked discipline problems. Ifthere are many teachers of both kinds present in the teacher group, the result is likelyto be low or zero correlations between emphasis on appropriate behaviour anddiscipline problems in the class. In any case, if such an explanation were at leastpartially correct, this would point up the need for more complex, reciprocal modelsof the cause-effect relationships involved (cf. Fraser Walberg, 1991; Little &McLaughlin, 1993; Hargreaves, 1994).

Finally, it is possible that individual teacher differences in goal priorities mayhave been largely overpowered by the generally strong emphasis on the fourhigh-priority goals. When approximately 80% of the teachers place quite a strongemphasis on no less than four key goals, individual differences in goal emphasisprobably do not have much opportunity to make themselves salient and play amarked role in affecting classroom behaviour differentially. Such an interpretationmust not be taken to mean that teachers' goal emphasis in general is unimportant orwithout effects on student behaviour. It may be useful to imagine a situation in

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which the goal priorities were completely reversed, with nice place and social equaliza-tion on top and the four high-priority goals far below on the scale of emphasis. Itwould be very unreasonable to expect that the teachers' classroom practice or thestudents' behaviour would then be the same as it was found to be in our study.However, such general or main effects of teacher goal emphasis have not beenexamined here; to answer such questions would require a different study with adifferent design involving countries or other units representing naturally occurringcontrasts of goal emphasis.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This research was supported by grants to Dan Olweus and Jan Helge Kallestad fromthe Norwegian Research Council (NFR) and Radet for psykisk helse; and grants toDan Olweus from the Johann Jacobs Foundation, and, in the earlier phases, fromthe Norwegian Ministry of Education which are gratefully acknowledged. We alsothank Professor Jim Stevenson of the University of Southampton for valuablecomments on the profile analyses.

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Documents

Teachers’ Emphases on General Educational Goals: a study of Norwegian teachers