The critical incident technique was chosen to identify specific teacher behaviour that could be used in a development of an evaluative instrument. It was desired to measure teacher effectiveness because a significant part of instruction in driver education takes place behind the wheel. The study takes account of the situations in which the teacher-behaviours take place. Representative examples of high school teachers, college instructors, and high school students of driver education contribute to 2,122 critical incidents which describe effective and ineffective behaviours of driver education teachers in behind-the-wheel instruction. Frequency distributions of abstracted critical behaviours within areas of behaviour, categories, and sub-categories, were tabulated. In addition, the frequency distributions of teacher-described and student-described behaviours were compared. Significant relationships between critical behaviours and situational variables were identified. Results suggest that critical behaviours vary in their effectiveness according to the situation in which they occur. The critical behaviours identified should provide criteria for the development of a measuring instrument to be used in evaluating the effectiveness of driver education teachers.
Samenvatting