The Social Psychology of Education
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The Social Psychology of Education

An Introduction and Guide to its Study

C.M. Fleming

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eBook - ePub

The Social Psychology of Education

An Introduction and Guide to its Study

C.M. Fleming

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About This Book

First Published in 1998. This is Volume XXIII of twenty-eight in the Sociology of Education series. This book seeks to provide an introduction and guide to social psychology of education. Written in 1944, it looks at the teacher and their changing role and personality when teaching from initial assessment, measurement of intelligence, use of instincts and modification of behaviour. This develops into addressing that pupils belong to different social groups that will influence their behaviour.

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Publisher
Routledge
Year
2013
ISBN
9781136273193
Subtopic
Sociologia
Edition
1
Part I
Teachers and the Pupils they Teach
Chapter I
The Class Looks at the Teacher: An Assessment of Personality
“THERE’S the new teacher. We had him this morning.”
“What’s he like ? ”
“Not bad.”
“I couldn’t hear what he said.”
“He looked decent.”
“He laughed a lot.”
“He didn’t see the paper dart I was making.”
“He talked too much.”
“I’m glad we’re to have him.”
“Anything’s better than the last one.”
“Oh, no. He’s not so good. I’m not going to work for him.”
“He can’t write on the blackboard.”
“He can’t mark a register.”
“Perhaps he’s a student—not a teacher ! ”
And so the talk went on as the boys and girls walked out of school. The same sort of talk might have been heard later that same evening when older girls and boys went home from the club and students returned from college. A new teacher is an object of supreme interest to any community of young people; but adults do not always notice the extent of the attentive scrutiny they receive, and rarely do they realise the degree to which youngsters are judges of character and engaged upon the diagnosis of personality.
What means do pupils employ to discover whether the new member of the school group is to be accepted, admired and followed, or rejected, despised and persecuted (in so far as persecution may prove worth while) ?
The first method they use is observation of externals —physical characteristics, dress, manner and speech. Pupils prefer teachers to be of their own type—to fall within the limits of the normal as they know it. What those limits are will depend upon their past experiences—their home life and social background. There are no absolute standards. A certain accent may prove a handicap in one district and a social asset in another. Certain mannerisms may irritate some pupils and pass unnoticed by others. Certain physical qualities may excite admiration in one group and attract no particular attention in another. There are also differences in the preferences and expectations of individual pupils. Some will, therefore, admire ; some will criticise and many will suspend judgment while they investigate further the qualities of the newcomer.
The second method employed is observation of behaviour. “Does he know the ropes ? ” “Has he done it before ? ” “Is he nervous ? ” “Can he speak so that I can hear him ? ” “Are his rate and his voice such that I can listen to him without weariness ? ” “Does he notice that I am here ? ” “Does he see me ? ” “Is he interested in me ? “A successful teacher is accepted by the school community because of his essential oneness with them in certain of their attributes and activities; but they ask more of him than that. They wish also a confidence born of competence and previous experience along the lines on which he proposes to lead them. And they are quite aware that these qualities are revealed partly through visible behaviour ; and that the pleasantness of class-room relationships will be greatly increased if the leadership offered is both definite and skilful. They wish also some degree of sympathy. They hope that the new teacher has a mind sufficiently “at leisure from itself” to look out upon them and show awareness of them— a personality able to react and to humour, to laugh with them as well as to guide them.
As a means of discovering the presence of this outward-looking sympathy, pupils use a third method of assessment. They begin to experiment. “Does he mean what he says ? ” “What will happen if . . . ? ”
This is a most fascinating occupation. It is engaged in by children from very early infancy. It is not unknown to adults in workshop or factory.
“Will he notice if I speak ? ” (“Or is he concentrating completely on his own ideas and the subject-matter he wishes to expound ? ”) “What will he do ? ” “Can he, safely, be made angry ? ” (Angry adults are entertaining—though slightly dangerous.)
The circumstances are very similar to those of any controlled experimentation. Miniature situations are deliberately devised. Careful observations are made ; and if the teacher proves erratic, ill-informed, or self-absorbed, he has small chance of either acceptance or admiration. The initial attentiveness secured by his novelty will decrease steadily as the group discovers new objects of greater interest and finds another leader more worthy of a following.
The methods employed by pupils in their study of the characteristics of a new teacher are not unlike those standardised in recent years by psychologists engaged on the assessment of temperament, personality or character. They may be summarised as follows :
(1)
a study of physical characteristics ;
(2)
an analysis of expressive movements—voice, gesture, eyes, mouth, gait, carriage, handwriting;
(3)
examination of personal expression through speech, writings, dress, possessions, etc. ;
(4)
observation of conduct and of the frequency of laughter, anger, etc. ;
(5)
rating of traits by comparison with those of other human beings in the same group ;
(6)
experiments in miniature situations deliberately devised ;
(7)
tests of actual persistence, endurance, honesty, self-control, etc., in the course of ordinary living;
(8)
a study of social background—family, school, community— in so far as this can be observed.
It is not proposed here to discuss each of these in detail. Many excellent books on the topic are readily accessible.1 Suffice it to say that such methods are informally and continuously employed in the processes of assessment, interaction and mutual adjustment which form part of the educative influences perpetually exerted by human beings upon one another in the social relationships of the home, the school or the community.
References
1. E.g. HARTSHORNE, H., and MAY, M. A., Studies in Deceit. Macmillan, 1928.a
SYMONDS, P. M., Diagnosing Personality and Conduct. Century, 1931.
ALLPORT, G. W., Personality : A Psychological Interpretation. Holt, 1937.
VERNON, P. E., The Assessment of Psychological Qualities by Verbal Methods. H.M.S.O., 1938.
a Places of publication are omitted to save space. Names of publishers are given to facilitate identification.
Chapter II
The Teacher Begins to Study the Class: A Measurement of Intelligence
THE teacher, like the pupil, is a student of psychology—trying to understand human nature and human behaviour. And, like the pupil, whatever his other preoccupations, he is engaged upon a continuous assessment of the qualities of the members of the school community.
It is, however, probably true to say that he is more concerned in the first place with the estimation of brightness or intelligence than with the diagnosis of personality or the interpretation of conduct. He is interested in the educability of his pupils. “Will I be able to teach them, to train them, to lead them, to change them ? ”
“How do their minds work ? ”
“A big class.”
“All sorts of youngsters.”
“I’ll never know them all.”
“What shining eyes they have ! ”
“A sulky face in the far corner.”
“That one talks too much.”
“I like the look of the little dark one.”
“There’s a quick one just beside the door.”
“But they’re not so bright as last year’s group.”
Estimation of intelligence has taken certain fairly defined forms —most of which are reflected in the first impressions of any teacher on his first meeting with any class.1
Indirect assessments come first—the shape of the face (forehead, nose, chin), the outline of the head (the bumps as they used to be studied by the phrenologists), the expression of the face, physical peculiarities of movement, gait or carriage, the nature of the hands, the bodily proportions in general. Such things, to a greater or less degree, are regularly noted by most people as a means towards the prediction of probable performance; and it is not surprising that in the history of intelligence testing observations of this type represented the first steps in objective estimation. In the latter part of the nineteenth century such descriptions of physical characteristics were supplemented by investigations into the powers of the body as shown in sensory discrimination and accurate movement. And at a still later date these investigations were followed by researches based on the expectation that brighter pupils would show greater accuracy and speed in the exercise of various powers of the mind. Mental qualities were more and more judged by mental symptoms.
The teacher face to face with a new class does not, of course, pause to realise that he is following the course taken by several generations of research workers ; but he does judge his pupils first by their looks and their movements and only later—as he comes to know them better—by an assessment of their performance.
“How much of this can you remember ? ”
“What did you see when I said that word ? ”
“Say these words after me.”
“Say these numbers after me.”
“Look at this drawing. I am going to ask you to reproduce it for me from memory.”
“How quickly can you do this exercise ? ”
“Which of these things has no connection with the others ? ”
“What is the meaning of this word ? ”
“Is there anything silly in this statement ? ”
“Which is the biggest of these numbers ? ”
“Arrange these in order of weight.”
“This is older than that and that is twice as old as these. Which is the oldest ? ”
Tests of memory, of visual imagery, and of attention were followed by tests devised to measure reasoning ability and the use of the mind in classification, definition, detection of absurdities, comparison, arrangements of ideas in sequence, deduction and the like.2
Much material of this kind is inevitably included in the ordinary experiences of classroom or club—almost irrespective of the actual subject-matter under review—and little by little the outlines of the picture are filled in. The teacher comes to believe that he knows his class. “Nothing they do will surprise me. I now know them through and through.”
There are, however, two disturbing factors. A teacher may make mistakes. He may entertain a prejudice against red hair, a Roman nose, slow responses, a garrulous tongue ; and, influenced by such things, he may condemn a pupil to undeserved neglect. A teacher also may be—and usually is—very closely confined to one classroom or one club. He does make comparisons. “This class is on the whole better-looking than the group I had last year.” “These club members are less friendly than those.” His comparisons, however, are within a very narrow framework. They are subjective—dependent upon his own passing opinion. They lack objectivity and impartiality.
The same sort of difficulty is encountered in the assessment of achievement. A teacher, for example, having worked with a class for a term, sets an examination and (full of hope) proceeds to the marking of the results. The first papers he reads are very poor. One pupil after another is incomprehensibly stupid and ill-informed. It is most depressing. Then a change occurs. The later responses are much more sensible. The second half of the class gains marks distinctly above those accorded to the first half.
It is possible, of course, that the papers of the weaker pupils happened to be collected at the top of the pile. Or it may have been that Mr. Jones, who did the marking, changed his standard as he worked through the bundle. Evidence on these possibilities can very readily be secured by re-marking each paper—beginning on the second occasion with those which were dealt with at the end of the first assessment. Estimation of the average of the two marks so obtained will probably go far to eliminate internal inconsistency.
It may have been, however, that the class was a very poor class (or that Mr. Jones was a very severe marker). Evidence on this can be got only by comparison with other classes and with the scores given by other examiners.
Such comparison of standards of achievement and of assessment can now be made with much more certainty than was possible even twenty-five years ago. It is not necessary here to describe the researches that have contributed to this development.3 Suffice it to say that three observations have made it possible :
(1)
Tests can be tested by trying them on representative samples in comparable groups.
(2)
Test results of representative samples when g...

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