Date of Graduation

1969

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to determine whether or not three important groups of citizens of Morgantown, West Virginia, consisting of public elementary school teachers, parents, and community leaders, differed significantly from each other in respect to their prescriptive and descriptive perceptions of the position of the public elementary school teacher. This study tested the following hypotheses: 1. No significant differences will exist when the three populations are compared on the basis of the way they perceive the four prescriptive roles of the elementary school teacher. 2. There will be significant differences between the elementary school teachers and the parent and community leader populations in respect to their descriptive perceptions of the roles of the elementary school teacher. 3. There will be no significant differences between the parent and community leader groups in respect to their descriptive perceptions of the roles of the elementary school teacher. The data were collected from all ninety-seven of the community's public elementary teachers, a ten percent random sample of public elementary school parents, and a random sample of fifty community leaders. All three populations responded to descriptive and prescriptive role inventories, each of which was divided into the following four teacher role categories: (l) Teachers Acting Toward Pupils, (2) Toward 121 Colleagues, (3) Toward Parents, and (4) Toward the Community. Group mean scores for each population on each of the four descriptive role categories and each of the four prescriptive role categories was then calculated. Significance was determined at the .05 level. 3h those instances where the analysis of variance indicated that a significant difference did exist among the three populations, the least significant difference test (L.S.D.) was employed to determine where the difference had occurred. The major descriptive and prescriptive role findings are as follows: 1. No significant differences were found among the three populations on Descriptive Roles One (Acting Toward Pupils) and Four (Acting Toward Community). 2. There was a significant difference between the teachers and the two lay populations in how they perceived the real actions of the elementaiy teacher toward her (l) colleagues (Role Two) and toward her (2) elementary school parents (Role Three). 3. Hypothesis number two was not completely supported by the descriptive data, therefore, it was rejected. 4. Hypothesis number three was supported by the descriptive findings. 5. No significant differences were found among the teachers, parents and community leaders on Prescriptive Roles One and Four. 6. The Prescriptive findings for Roles Two and Three indicated that there were significant differences between (1) the parent and teacher populations in the way they perceived the "ideal" behavior of the elementary teacher toward her colleagues (Role Two), and (2) between the 122 teachers and the two lay populations in the way they perceived the "ideal" behavior of the teacher toward her elementary school parents (Role Three). In summary, this study offered evidence to support the following conclusions: 1. The parents and community leaders sampled in this study were accurately informed in respect to what actually does occur in the classroom. 2. The three populations sampled in this study were in agreement in respect to what should be the ideal behavior of the elementary teacher toward her pupils. 3. The three populations were in agreement in respect to their descriptive and prescriptive perceptions of the elementary teacher interacting with her community. k. The parents and community leaders in this study were not satisfied with parent-teacher interactions. 5. The agreement between the parents and community leaders on all four prescriptive and descriptive roles offered evidence to support the theory that some communities do have a normative standard of behavior for the position of the public elementary school teacher.

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