Teacher and principal perceptions of dispositional characteristics needed by middle school teachers to be most effective in the classroom

The primary purpose of this study was to determine and compare teacher and principal perceptions of dispositional characteristics needed by middle school teachers to be most effective in the classroom. Furthermore, this study ascertained the influence of gender and experience on the perceptions of respondents.; Descriptive statistics and a 2 X 2 X 5 factorial design were used to collect and analyze the data for the study. Six hundred and sixty-one public school teachers from Indiana were randomly selected from schools configured grades 6--8 to participate. Eighty-three principals from 100 of those 216 schools also participated. The Teacher Quality Questionnaire (TQ2) was developed by the researcher to measure respondents' perceptions. The instrument was field-tested and found to be valid and exhibited adequate reliability coefficients. Finally, data were treated through the application of a Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA). The null hypotheses were tested at the .05 probability level or better.; Based on the significant findings of the data analysis of the research, the following conclusions were drawn: (1) Principals perceived the belief that all students can learn as the single most important dispositional item to teacher effectiveness on the TQ2; (2) Teachers perceived the statement, the teacher must serve as a role model for all students, as most important to teacher effectiveness; (3) Both teachers and principals perceived the belief that student failure is a refection of the teacher as the least important statement regarding teacher effectiveness on the TQ2; (4) Respondents, regardless of position (principal and teacher), perceived Professional Characteristics as the most important dispositional area to teacher effectiveness; (5) Principals rated all 34 items on the TQ2 higher than teachers with statistically significant differences across 13 items; (6) After controlling for gender, the principal significantly endorsed more perceived importance of Collaborative Characteristics needed for teacher effectiveness than teacher respondents; (7) Across all four subscales, females endorsed more perceived importance of all dispositional areas than males with the greatest difference in the area of Instructional Characteristics; and (8) Years of experience among both groups did not produce a significant influence on the perceived importance of each item on the TQ2, nor the four subscales.