Children's perceptions of their teachers' feelings towards them related to self-perception, school achievement and behavior : a replication

As a graduate student at Ball State University I became very interested in the development of self concept. My studies in self concept led me to a possible solution to a puzzle which had bothered me during the years I had been teaching.I had observed that a student, for example, would sit attentively, work and achieve in one teacher's classroom and then go to the next classroom with a different teacher and be inattentive, disruptive and fail to achieve. Before my studies in self concept, I felt this behavior was caused by a lack of interest in the subject matter. Now I believe the behavior of such students is related to their self concepts and to the behavior and attitudes of teachers. In order to check my belief I needed an instrument that would measure the effect of the teacher on students' self concepts, school achievement, and behavior. After a search through the literature had been conducted, I found an experiment which measured the effect of the teacher on students' opinions of themselves. With the study (Davidson and Lang, 1960) as a model, it was decided to replicate the study in order to determine if the findings of Davidson and Lang would hold for a different population a decade later in history.Thesis (M.A.