Teachers' Attitudes in Open and Traditional Schools

Abstract

Scales measuring attitudes toward education, teaching, pupils, and innovations were administered to 87 teachers who staffed six of the schools of a southern Ontario board of education. These schools differed systematically in openness of educational program and openness of architecture. Multivariate and univariate analyses of variance were used to study the differences among the schools in teachers' attitudes toward education in general, teaching as a profession, pupils, and educational innovations. Significant effects, multivariate and univariate alike, were found for program level and architecture type. It was concluded that those teachers who conducted a more open program and/or who taught in an architecturally open school had significantly more positive attitudes than those teachers who conducted a less open program and/or who taught in a school which is either architecturally closed or a mixture of open and closed architectures.