Pupils' perceptions of school and teachers. I--Identifying the underlying dimensions

Previous comparative studies have shown interesting differences in motivation and approaches to learning between Britain and Hungary, which were considered to reflect different methods of teaching. The present study reports the development of scales designed to measure pupils' perceptions of school and teachers with the intention of relating those perceptions to school motivation and approaches to learning. The scales covered a wide range of aspects relating both to pupils' perceptions of school ethos and aspects of the learning environment. An inventory made up of 18 five-item Likert scales describing perceptions of school and teacher was given to samples of 516 12-15 year-old pupils in five British schools and a comparable sample of 602 pupils in Hungary. The factor structure of the school and teacher perceptions scales was almost identical in the two countries, suggesting that pupils perceive their schools in very similar ways in spite of the contrasting educational and social systems. There were differences between schools which, although small at the scale level, were sometimes large at the level of individual items. It is suggested that a revised set of scales which have been derived from these analyses might be used by schools to judge the way they are perceived by their pupils, and so also by the parents who will be having more influence in future on school policy and management.