Being a teacher: altruistic and narcissistic expectations of pre-service teachers

Abstract

The article focuses on investigating pre-service teachers’ expectations of their future teaching career, in particular concerning teacher–student interrelations. In an attempt to comprehend why people choose teaching as a professional career, a conceptual model titled ‘Teachers’ altruistic-narcissistic classroom expectations’ was designed and tested. The model puts forward for consideration the idea that pre-service teachers view their future relations with students as being based on four basic psychological foundations: genuine altruism, paternalistic altruism, benevolent narcissism, and genuine narcissism. A study to test for the validity of this model, using Facet Theory and smallest space analysis as the methodological approach is reported. One hundred and sixty student–teachers participated in the study. The findings provided evidence in support of the model’s validity. It is argued that altruism and narcissism conjointly may be regarded as factors motivating people to opt for teaching as a career, and that altruistic and narcissistic expectations can predict teachers’ classroom behavior.

Keywords:

• Narcissism
• altruism
• teachers and teaching
• teacher–student interrelations
• professional self
• Facet Theory

Notes

1. The coefficient of alienation (COA) is a technical term that expresses the extent to which the physical distances between items on the SSA map truly reflect the set of correlations between them. The range of values of the COA is from 0 to 1, and the lower the value of the COA, the better the fit. A COA with a value of .2 or less indicates good fit of the distances between the items on the SSA map and the correlations.

2. The goodness-of-fit measure, or the regional goodness-of-fit, expresses the extent to which the obtained empirical structure reflects the hypothesized content facets, i.e. the congruence between the tested theoretical model and the spatial deployment of the empirical data. The range of values of the goodness-of-fit measure is between 0 and 1, and a higher value indicates a better fit.