Values of college seniors enrolled in teacher preparation four to five years later

Abstract

Wood County (Ohio) Mental Health Clinic Increased interest in values has been made evident by the number of recent publications and dissertations in the area. all have researched values of teachers and future teachers. Except for the work of Arsenian (1970), Bender (1958), and Kelly (1955), studies that measured values of the same individuals over a period of years in an adult population were not to be found in the literature. None of the last three studies cited was concerned specifically with adult values of former teacher-education students. The major purpose of this follow-up study was to ascertain whether the values of teacher-education students changed with the passage of time. Possible differences in current values in the sample related to (1) continuation in teaching, (2) marriage, (3) children, and (4) further education also were investigated. METHODI n the fall of 1970, 75 former college seniors who completed several Allport, Vernon, Lindzey (AVL) Study of Values from 1964 to 1966 as described by Icirchner and Hogan (1968) were mailed a cover letter, a Study of Values, and a short questionnaire that pertained to the demographic variables listed above. The cover letter summarized our earlier study and offered to send the Ss their individual present and past results. A maximum of two additional mailings was made to those who did not reply to the initial request. Four males and four females could not be located at the last address provided by the Illinois State University Alumni Association or the Office of Admissions and Records. Of the 70 possible remaining Ss, 81% returned the data. Ten out of 14 males (71y0) and 47 out of 56 females (84%) responded. Ages of the former seniors ranged from 25 to 36, with 54 of the 57 Xs between 25 and 27. Since there were no significant changes in the Study of Values scores among the several administrations of the instrument in our earlier study, we used the last AVL that the person completed 4 to 5 years ago as his past measured values. Analyses of variance were used to determine whether there were any differences on the Study of Values scales for the demographic variables. Because the number in the sample fluctuates on each of the analyses below, they are discussed and explained separately. RESULTS Passage of T i mThere were no significant differences between men's and women's scores on any of the AVL scales between 1965-6 and 1970. Separate analyses were computed by sex due to the larger number of women (10 males us. 47 females) in the sample and because sex differences previously were found on the scales. Males in secondary education scored significantly higher on the political (.01) and theoretical scales 'The authors wish to express their appreciation to Dr. Tse-Kia Tcheng, Director of t.he Test _ _ _ _ Service at Illinois State University, for his consultation.