Human Relations Training for In-Service Teachers At the Community College Level.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of 30 hours of human relations training upon the facilitative communications of in-service teachers at the community college level in terms of affective sensitivity, core dimensions of gross facilitation, emphatic underst and ing, and discrimination of facilitative responses. A further purpose was to study the effect of human relations training upon the self-concept of in-service teachers at the community college level. More specifically, the study was designed to determine if in-service teachers at the community level who are given approximately 30 hours of human relations training would show any difference in their self-concepts and facilitative communication skills as a result of the training and would have more favorable self-concepts and facilitative communication skills, than in-service teachers at the community college level who did not have the human relations training. Another purpose was to determine the possible effects the organizational climate might have upon human relations training as it is related to classroom interaction with students of different socio-economic classes and races. Ten in-service teachers were r and omly placed into the experimental group and ten in-service teachers were r and omly placed into the control group. The results indicated that there was no significant difference between the experimental and control group at the .05 level on any instrument to measure skill or knowledge acquisition except on the measure of Carkhuff's Discrimination Assessment Index. This indicates that the training might have augmented the skills of the experimental group to determine their response on Carkhuff's Gross Ratings of Facilitative Interpersonal Functioning Scale. The experimental group made no greater gains than the control group on Carkhuff's Empathic Underst and ing In Interpersonal Processes, on the Tennessee Self-Concept Scale (total positive score), on Fl and er's Interaction Analysis, and on Cheek's Before You Work With Blacks Test. Factors that might have had an impact on these negative outcomes were: (1) No administrational support for the training even though the study was approved by the administration; and (2) Some staff members were reluctant about participating in the project. Nevertheless, the majority of the in-service teachers in both the experimental and control group expressed the opinion that they had benefited from their exposure to the training. They expressed a desire to enter training or to continue training.