The effects of speech style and other attributes on teachers' attitudes toward pupils

Abstract

This study examined some of the clues which teachers use to form attitudes toward students. Photographs, speech samples, drawings and compositions, obtained from Grade III boys, served as the stimulus materials. These were randomly combined and presented to student-teachers as examples of the personal characteristics and schoolwork of certain pupils. The student-teacher judges were asked to form subjective impressions of the pupils and to evaluate them on various characteristics using semantic differential scales. The results indicated that the voice and photograph cues significantly affected their judgments of the students' intelligence and personal characteristics.