Purpose of this investigation is to find out the effects of child's Temperament and teacher's Temperament, which are perceived by teacher, on teacher-child relationship. This investigation would also seek for the interaction between Temperament of chi...
Purpose of this investigation is to find out the effects of child's Temperament and teacher's Temperament, which are perceived by teacher, on teacher-child relationship. This investigation would also seek for the interaction between Temperament of child and teacher that are related to teacher-child relationship.
To achieve the purpose of the investigation, questions were set up as following;
Question 1. What is the effect of child's Temperament on teacher-child relationship?
Question 2. What is the effect of teacher's Temperament on teacher-child relationship?
Question 3. What is the interaction between Temperament of child and teacher, related to teacher-child relationship?
To solve these questions, 312 child aged 4 or 5 and 56 homeroom teachers, from nurseries in Seoul and Gyeonggi areas, were selected as objects.
Instruments used for this investigation are divided into three parts;
1. Min-Jeong Gang(1997)'s adaptation of 4 subcategories
(approach, adaptability, quality of mood, responsiveness) was used to measure child's Temperament. This original form of this adaptation was selected by Gordon(1981), based on Thomas, Chess and Korn(1977)'s Teacher Temperament Questionnaire; TTQ
2. Jeong-Min Kim(1992)'s adaptation of Windle and Lerner(1986)'s Adult DOTS-R(Revised Dimensions of Temperament Survey) was modified and used to measure child's Temperament.
3. Jin-Sook Lee(2001)'s adaptation of Planta(1994)'s Student Teacher Relationship; STRS was used to measure teacher-child relationship. Respondents of these three instruments above were homeroom teachers of child care facilities.
TTQ, DOTS-R and STRS were distributed to teachers of full-day attending child, and collected after two weeks.
Data was processed by SPSS 13.0 program, and analyzed as below. Frequency analysis was done to analyze the objects general matters, Reliability analysis was done to calculate percentage and to grasp the reliability of the questionnaire, and Cronbach's a was calculated to verify the reliability. Also, Independence t-test and ANOVA were carried out to see the difference between variables according to background. Duncan back-testing was used for back-testing of ANOVA. Correlation analysis and Multiple-regression were done, to verify the questions and to see the effects of independent variables on dependent variables, respectively. In addition, the interaction between teacher's Temperament and child's Temperament was discovered through hierarchical regression.
Main results earned from this investigation are as following;
First, it was found out that variables related to parents, child and teacher had significant effects on teacher-child relationship.
All of factors of parents, including age, job and education level seemed to affect teacher-child relationship. However, only one variable of child, child's experience of educational institution, had dependence and effects on teacher-child relationship, among other variables such as sex and birth ranking of child. Teacher's age, educational level and career all affected teacher-child relationship.
Second, all subcategories of child's Temperament, including approach, adaptability, quality of mood and responsiveness, showed significant effects on teacher-child relationship. In other words, child's quality of mood, responsiveness and adaptability had all positive effects on intimacy between teacher and child. Especially with a higher level of responsiveness, a child tends to form a conflicted and dependent relationship with a teacher. Responsiveness seemed to affect not only on intimacy, but also on conflict and dependence. Child with higher responsiveness positively approach new stimulation, environment and changes in environment, and they also adapt well to the situation. Child who reacted happily to various situations had a tendency to form a close relationship with teachers, and had less conflicts and dependence on teachers. Therefore, it was clear that child's Temperament is a very important variable for the teacher-child relationship.
Third, all sub-factors of teacher's Temperament, including activity level, approach, flexibility, mood, regularity and attention, affected significantly on teacher-child relationship. Teacher's flexibility, approach and mood affected positively to for an intimate relationship. Activity level and attention of teacher had positive effects on conflict, while activity level and approach of teacher had positive effects on dependence. Especially, flexibility showed the most positive effects on teacher-child relationship. Therefore, teacher's Temperament was acknowledged to be an important variable for the teacher-child relationship.
Fourth, 5 out of 24 variables, were verified that Temperament of teacher and child actually had interaction effects on teacher-child relationship. 'Flexibility of teacher' and 'approach and responsiveness of child' had a significant interaction to control teacher-child relationship, while 'attention of teacher' and 'approach, quality of mood and responsiveness of child interacted significantly to control the relationship. Therefore, it was clear that Temperament of teacher and child interacted significantly to control and to affect teacher-child relationship.