One of the basic goals of the American educational system is t o meet the needs of the individual student. The stated intent is to provide for the maximum growth and development of his capabilities and personality. Responsibility and concern for the development of good student mental health has traditionally been divided between the classroom teacher and the professional mental health worker (school psychologist, guidance couselor, etc.) . However, despite their common goal, research during the past fifty years has tended to suggest that these two professional groups show little agreement on those classroom behaviors which constitute good student mental health.Wickman (1926) pioneered the research in this area with his study of the attitudes of elementary teachers and mental hygienists toward certain behavior problems of children. Variations of his study have been conducted by Stendler (1949), Sparks (1952), Stouffer (1952Stouffer ( , 1956, and Hunter (1957). Their findings tended to confirm the results found earlier by Wickman; that is that teachers and mental hygienists vary widely in their appraisal of the classroom behavior of students.The purpose of this study is to replicate Wickman's procedures with a current group of secondary teachers and "mental hygienists" or mental health workers. These results will then be compared with the earlier findings. At issue is whether teachers and mental hygienists show greater agreement today than they did in 1926 on those classroom behaviors thought to constitute good mental health. METHOD SampleThe 22 secondary teachers participating in this study came from a small Midwestern consolidated high school located in an agricultural area. Of these teachers, 16 were male and 6 female. Ten teachers had completed Master's degrees. Teaching experience ranged from 1 to 25 years with the average number of years taught being 8 years.The 7 "mental hygienists" were all Ph. D. counseling psychologists currently teaching in university counselor education programs. There were 6 males and 1 female in this group. I n total they possessed 40 years of experience in this field. InstrumentAs in the Wickman study, each of the teachers and mental hygienists was asked to rate a list of 50 student behavior problems. Examples of the behaviors included such things as disorderliness in class and restlessness. Each trait was rated in answer to the question, "How serious (or undesirable) is this behavior in any child?" The ratings for each of the 50 behaviors were made by placing a mark on a continuum that went from "of no consequence" t o "an extremely grave problem." Following Wickman's procedures, the continuum was then divided into 20 equal segments and the ratings converted to scores ranging from .5 to 20.5. An
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