A study of student personality as a function of open vs. traditional school plans, educational climate and teacher personality

Problem The primary question posed in this study was, "Is student personality impacted by the physical curricular plan, by the teacher perception of educational climate and by the teacher personality?" Procedures Two hundred eighty-nine randomly selected seventh and eighth grade students from five junior high schools responded to the High School Personality Questionaire to obtain a measure of student personality. Additionally, the faculty members of the schools responded to the Sixteen Personality Factor instrument and the Occupational Climate Description Questionaire to measure teacher personality and perceived school climate. Students were identified with their own teachers enabling correlations to be made regarding student personality trains with an average of the same traits of that student's teachers. Statistical Techniques and Findings First, bivariate correlation techniques were used to assess the relationships of student personality with teacher personality, type of school plan and perceived school climate. The relationship of teacher personality with school plan and school climate, and school plan with school climate were also measured. In the analysis of student personality with the other three variables significant relationships were found in nine of the fourteen scales of student personality correlated with teacher personality, and in three scales of student personality with school climate. The degree of school plant openness indicated no significant bivariate relationships. Eight of the sixteen scales of teacher personality were found to be significantly related to the school climate while seven of the same traits were significantly related to the type of school plan. The effects of the degree of openness on the school climate was found to have little measured effect. In the second phase, canonical correlation and multiple regression analyses of the same variables indicated the same general results, with significance noted in student and teacher personality variable correlations, and additionally in the correlation of student personality with the type of school plan. The correlation between teacher personality and type of school plan was also analyzed as being significant on one set of variables. A second order correlation combined the results of these first two phases, indicating that the type of school plan accounted for about twelve per cent of the student personality variance with teacher personality accounting for another fourteen per cent. Because of the correlation between the variables of teacher personality and school plan, together they accounted for nineteen and two-tenths of the variance in student personality. A general trend in the analyzed data indicated that students seem to relate to teachers with similar traits, and that certain personality traits, both student and teacher, tend to be related to certain types of school plans and certain traits of organizational climate. Conclusions The basic findings of this study indicate that the type of school plan and teacher personality do account for almost one-fifth (19.2%) of the variance in student personality. The finding that educational climate had very little analyzed effect on student personality may have been a function of the measure used. Recommendations At least two questions have arisen from the findings of the study. In this light, the following recommendations are considered to be appropriate: 1. Further research using multiple measures needs to be conducted in the area of school climate and how it affects student personality in conjunction with school plan and teacher personality. 2. A study of the possibility of teacher personality changing as a function of the school plan might be a line of future research.