The relationships among teacher characteristics and perceived caring

Abstract

When asked to describe what characteristics or behaviors make teachers effective, a sample of pre‐service and experienced teachers mentioned caring more often than any other variable (Perry & Rog, 7992). The primary purpose of this research was to identify specific teacher characteristics or behavior patterns that communicate caring to students and to identify teacher characteristics or “misbehaviors”; that disrupt the students’ perceptions of caring. Respondents in the study were 249 students (142 males and 107 females) enrolled in Communication classes at a large mid‐Atlantic university. The target teachers were those the participants had in the classes they took immediately prior to the class in which the data were collected. Students’ perceptions of their teachers’ caring was found to be positively related to their perceptions of their teachers’ immediacy, responsiveness, and assertiveness while negatively related to teacher verbal aggressiveness. Teacher immediacy, responsiveness, assertiveness, and verbal aggressiveness each contributed to the prediction of a significant amount of variance in perceived caring. Implications for teacher training and suggestions for future research are discussed.