When teachers are seen as kind: An automatic response experiment on Filipino children’s perception of their early grade teachers

Abstract

Children's perception about their teachers has been widely addressed utilizing student evaluation of teacher's performance. However, there is with regard to how children perceive their teachers based on the warmth -competent dimensions following Fiske's Stereotype Content Modeling Theory (2006).Using a within-subject randomized block design through the process of Psychopy, a sample of 80 kindergarten to Grade 3 Filipino students were presented with word-stimuli describing their teachers as either warm or competent. The word-stimuli tasks revealed how these learners regularly construct and use categorical representations to simplify how they make sense of other people. Paired sample t-test analysis supports Fiske's notion that warmth is primarily perceived, while competence takes a secondary role. Results suggest that students perceive the warmth dimension as integral in social judgment about teachers and thus affects stereotypical ideas of teachers needing to be more nurturing. The results show in-service teachers how they are stereotyped by their young students and highlights characteristics that contribute to the teaching-learning process. Thus, this study supports the claim that cognition about teachers and how they should relate with their students usually form a psychological process of inducing positive emotions and relationships towards learning, lending a classroom atmosphere that promotes a healthy student-teacher relationship which consequently reinforces students' learning.