TEACHER ATTITUDES AS A FUNCTION OF PUPIL CONTROL IDEOLOGY
| Pages | 211-219 |
| Date | 01 February 1976 |
| Published date | 01 February 1976 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/eb009755 |
| Author | V. LEO BARTLETT |
| Subject Matter | Education |
THE JOURNAL OF EDUCATIONAL ADMINISTRATION
VOLUME XIV, NUMBER 2 OCTOBER, 1976
TEACHER ATTITUDES AS A FUNCTION OF
PUPIL CONTROL IDEOLOGY
V. LEO BARTLETT
The Pupil Control Ideology (PCI) concept has been used extensively to describe the school
organization. Teachers hate been described as either "custodial" or "humanistic" in their
belief orientation to control of pupils. But clarification of
the
nature of pupil control and the
teacher attitudes which lie at the base of control, has not been investigated adequately. The
first section of the present investigation indicates the attitudes of teachers which are as-
sociated with high levels of custodialism. These attitudes include emphasis on, content to be
taught, teacher direction, rigid classroom procedures and social disengagement from pupils.
The second part of the study shows that while operational measures of control may be
similar, attitudes underlying control may differ. In schools serving higher socio-economic
communities, teachers exhibit an "emotional disengagement—non-teacher direction" form
of ideology. The conclusion is drawn that unless future investigations both identify attitudes
and explain the interactions of attitudes of teachers in each school system, Pupil Control
Ideology may be an inadequate descriptor of the school as a social system.
The distinctive characteristics of Australian schools have been reviewed
in the past1 and some evidence of the attitudes and beliefs of teachers and
administrators to these features of schools has been provided more
recently.2 One of the more salient characteristics of schools, and in par-
ticular schools in Australia, is the method of discipline or control of
pupils.
The beliefs of teachers and school administrators about control of
pupils can be described in terms of the school organizational concept of
Pupil Control Ideology (PCI) developed by Willower, Eidell and Hoy.3
The concept is defined as including both normative and structural aspects
of a school's culture and the instrument used to measure it permits
teachers to be described as either custodial or humanistic.
The custodial type of school organization places greater emphasis on
external order, primitive sanctions, inflexibility in teaching strategies and
views pupil behaviour in stereotyped moralistic terms. The humanistic
organization on the other hand stresses self
discipline,
democratic proces-
ses in the classroom, flexibility in approach to the curriculum and its ob-
jectives,and views pupil behaviour without moralistic overtones.
V. LEO BARTLETT is a Lecturer in Education at the University of Queensland. He holds
the degrees of B.A., B.Sc. (Qld.) and M.Ed. Admin. (U.N.E.). Following the completion of
his M.Ed. Admin. degree Mr. Bartlett was awarded the Journal of Education Administration
Prize. Mr. Bartlett's other areas of research and publication are in geography and
criminology.
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