Abstract
An adaptation of the Minnesota Teacher Attitude Inventory was administered to all Garnett College students during the first week of the 1968–1969 session. It was administered again towards the end of the course, just before the Teacher's Certificate Examination. Scores were available for 243 students, who had taken the inventory on both occasions.
There was an overall increase in mean score of 13.18 points between the two administrations of the Inventory, the difference being highly significant. This represents a change of attitude from autocratic or authoritarian to democratic or liberal. There was a marked differentiation of attitude according to subject specialism, students of arts subjects obtaining less authoritarian scores than students of technical subjects.
The overall correlation of the attitude inventory with marks in the written examination was positive and significant (r = 0.21). While the overall correlation with assessments of practical teaching was near zero and non-significant, it was significant in some of the specialist groups, being positive for some groups and negative for others.
In January 1972, the attitude inventory was sent to the same sample of students, who had now had over two years' experience of full-time teaching in institutions of further education. Somewhat less than half returned completed inventories. The mean scores of this sample of 105 students had fallen to a value not significantly different from that obtained in the first administration. The same general trend was shown by both men and women.
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Smith, I.M. Changes in students' attitudes to teaching. High Educ 2, 361–376 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00138811
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00138811