Citation

Malfetti JL. Highw. Res. Board bull. 1962; 330: 69-86.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1962, National Research Council (U.S.A.), Highway Research Board)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The critical incident technique was chosen to identify specific teacher behavior 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-behaviors 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 behaviors of driver education teachers in behind-the-wheel instruction. Frequency distributions of abstracted critical behaviors within areas of behavior, categories, and sub-categories, were tabulated. In addition, the frequency distributions of teacher-described and student-described behaviors were compared. Significant relationships between critical behaviors and situational variables were identified.

RESULTS suggest that critical behaviors vary in their effectiveness according to the situation in which they occur. The critical behaviors identified should provide criteria for the development of a measuring instrument to be used in evaluating the effectiveness of driver education teachers.