Passion, perception, and performance: Do students’ perceptions of a teacher affect how they expect to perform in a subject?
JUNG, Seungjun
DOI: http://doi.org/10.34614/2022IYRC23
Category: Social Science
Abstract – A teacher can significantly influence the educational lives of a student. Among a teacher's various characteristics and skills, their knowledge and passion are heavily related to a student’s attitude and outcome. The relationship between teachers and students is determined by the latter’s perception of the teacher, which is often based on the information they have about the teachers. Therefore, the present study examined if students’ perceptions of their teacher influenced their predictions about their own attitudes and outcomes for the subject. This was done by experimentally manipulating the available information about the teacher’s knowledge and passion. Students’ perception of the teacher’s attitude was positively correlated with their own predicted attitude in both Knowledge and Passion conditions. However, for their own predicted outcome, this positive correlation was found only in the Passion condition. These findings suggest that, based on the information they have about teachers’ knowledge and passion, the more positive they perceived the teacher’s attitude to be, the more positive they expected their own attitude to be. However, in similar circumstances, when determining their outcome for the subject, they expected it to be good only when they perceived the teacher to be passionate, and not when they perceived them to be knowledgeable.