ED314401 SP031883

 

Title: Teachers' Strategies for Coping with Perfectionist Students. Research Series No. 198.
Author(s): Brophy, Jere; Rohrkemper, Mary
Author Affiliation: Michigan State Univ., East Lansing. Inst. for Research on Teaching.(BBB15214)
Pages: 90
Publication Date: October 1989
Available from: EDRS Price MF01/PC04 Plus Postage.
Availability: Institute for Research on Teaching, Michigan State University, 252 Erickson Hall, E. Lansing, MI 48824 ($8.00).
Language: English
Document Type: Reports--Research (143)
Geographic Source: U.S.; Michigan
Journal Announcement: RIEMAY1990

Experienced elementary teachers (N=98) described their general strategies for coping with perfectionist students told how they would handle incidents depicted in two vignettes portraying problems of perfectionism at school. Most of the teachers were oriented toward sympathetic responses featuring support, encouragement, assistance, and attempts at cognitive restructuring (getting students who were perfectionsts to view mistakes as normal features of the learning process). Higher rated teachers exhibited greater confidence and described a greater variety of strategies in more detail, but the lower rated teachers generally spoke along the same themes. The teachers' responses indicated that they were able to supplement cognitive restructuring with additional approaches that take advantage of their roles as instructor and authority figure. Teachers can work with the problem directly by helping perfectionists to shape their thinking as they set goals and expectations prior to classroom tasks, to cope with the events that occur as they work on the tasks, and to evaluate their performance both as it unfolds and after it has been completed. (Author/JD)

Descriptors: Attitude Change; Behavior Modification; *Cognitive Restructuring; Elementary Education; Intervention; Responses; Student Attitudes; *Student Behavior;
*Student Characteristics; *Student Reaction; *Teacher Role; *Teacher Student Relationship
Identifiers: *Perfectionism