Chapter V: Teacher Characteristics and Careers

Abstract

Projecting to the privileged vantage point of the year 2065, Cartwright (1965) expressed the dilemma of those who tried to improve teaching in 1965: "The authorities on teacher education, having almost no knowledge resulting from research, made their decisions in the manner of primitive people, basing them 'on varying combinations of knowledge and superstition, wisdom and foolishment, tolerance and prejudice, desire to improve and tribal tradition, perspicacity and narrowness of vision' " (p. 296).Was the situation really this bad? What have those who would increase our knowledge through research been doing? Educational research as it is and as it should be has been discussed in a number of books and articles. Teacher EffectivenessIn spite of the elusiveness of the qualities of the effective teacher, educators have continued to try to isolate, describe, predict, and train him. The concept of the good teacher has been questioned by those who have written critically about teacher research, but it has been very much in use in many of the recent studies. Some of those engaged in research have asked by what frame of reference and by what expectations and values a teacher is being judged effective. A few researchers have begun to ask under what conditions a particular type of teacher is effective or ineffective. And implicit in one or two studies is the question of which teachers are effective for which students.Some have felt that the whole approach to the problem is invalid. Combs (Combs and Mitzel, 1964) stated flatly that objective measurement of the good teacher is impossible and that it is the use a teacher makes of his unique personhood (i.e., the meanings behind behavior) rather than any set of personality traits all good teachers possess in common which results in excellence in teaching. Mitzel, in rebuttal, argued that it is not what the teacher thinks and feels but what he does that actually affects the pupil.