1. Abstract
The Teacher Preference Schedules (TPS), developed by George G. Stern, Joseph Masling, Barnett Denton, John Henderson, and Rachel Levin in 1960, represents a landmark psychometric instrument designed to assess the unconscious motivations, psychological gratifications, and cognitive rationalizations that drive instructional styles and occupational choices in education. Grounded conceptually in Henry Murray’s personological need-press theory, the instrument departs from conventional competency-based teacher evaluations by probing the latent psychological dynamics underlying instructional behavior. The TPS was established after preliminary ethnographic and qualitative investigations identified 18 archetypal teaching roles, which were systematically distilled via rigorous criterion interviews into ten definitive instructional dimensions: Practical, Status-Striving, Nurturant, Nondirective, Critical, Preadult-Fixated, Orderly, Dependent, Exhibitionistic, and Dominant.
The measurement battery utilizes a dual-scale architecture comprising a total of 100 carefully balanced items operationalized through two complementary measurement lenses: the Gratification Scale, which captures direct affective and motivational satisfaction using a 6-point continuum ranging from “strong dislike, disapproval” to “strong liking, preference, approval,” and the Attitude Scale, which measures ideological rationalizations and pedagogical beliefs across a 6-point agreement continuum ranging from “strong disagreement” to “strong agreement.” Psychometric evaluations across diverse cohorts—including undergraduate teacher-trainees, student-teachers, and experienced practicing educators across the United States—yielded robust subscale internal consistency and test-retest reliability coefficients ranging from .654 to .865. Item discrimination analyses revealed scale discrimination indices spanning from .26 to well over .40, substantially surpassing conventional psychometric viability thresholds. By providing a multidimensional diagnostic profile of educator motives, the TPS serves as an essential tool for educational research, vocational guidance, professional identity studies, and the psychodynamic evaluation of classroom environments.
2. Keywords
Teacher Preference Schedules, George G. Stern, teaching motivation, teacher gratification, pedagogical attitudes, need-press theory, teacher personality, educational psychometrics, instructional roles, teacher appraisal, unconscious motivations, vocational psychology, classroom dynamics, person-environment fit, psychodynamic assessment
3. Authors
The Teacher Preference Schedules were formulated by a collaborative research team centered at Syracuse University, led by prominent figures in psychometrics and clinical psychology:
- George G. Stern, Ph.D.: Professor of Psychology and Senior Research Associate at the Psychological Research Center, Syracuse University. Stern was an influential pioneer in environmental assessment, personality measurement, and the operationalization of Murrayan need-press models within educational settings (e.g., the Activities Index and High School Characteristics Index).
- Joseph Masling, Ph.D.: Clinical psychologist and professor known for his extensive scholarly contributions to projective testing, interpersonal dynamics, psychoanalytic assessment, and the empirical validation of clinical concepts.
- Barnett Denton, M.S.: Research Associate in Psychology, Syracuse University, specializing in educational psychometrics and psychometric test construction.
- John Henderson, M.A.: Psychometrician and researcher contributing to item development, sample validation, and statistical discrimination studies.
- Rachel Levin, Ph.D.: Educational researcher and measurement specialist focused on teacher training dynamics, pedagogical attitudes, and institutional social climate.
4. Purpose
The primary purpose of the Teacher Preference Schedules (TPS) is to systematically measure, differentiate, and analyze the unconscious motivations, psychological gratifications, and manifest attitudes associated with distinct teaching roles. Historically, teacher appraisal systems and pedagogical evaluations focused almost exclusively on outward cognitive competence, subject-matter knowledge, academic achievement, or superficial classroom management techniques. Stern and his colleagues recognized that such traditional evaluations fundamentally failed to explain why individual educators exhibited radically divergent teaching styles, why certain teachers thrived in specific institutional climates while deteriorating in others, and what personal needs were satisfied through day-to-day interactions with pupils.
From an applied research and psychodiagnostic perspective, the TPS was engineered to bridge the profound divide between latent teacher personality dynamics and manifest pedagogical behavior. The authors postulated that teaching serves as an arena for the satisfaction of underlying psychological needs. However, because cultural norms demand that teachers project altruism, objectivity, and dedication, many of these primary needs are obscured or defended through cognitive rationalizations. For example, a deep-seated need for interpersonal control may be rationalized by an instructor as an ideological dedication to classroom discipline, or an exhibitionistic need for public validation may be rationalized as a progressive commitment to theatrical, engaging lecture delivery. The TPS operationalizes both levels of personality functioning by juxtaposing explicit gratifications (what the teacher emotionally enjoys) with institutional attitudes (what the teacher ideologically espouses).
In academic and vocational settings, the TPS fulfills several vital objectives:
- Teacher Selection and Vocational Counseling: Assisting prospective educators and counseling psychologists in identifying incongruities between an individual’s latent motivational architecture and the psychological realities of primary, secondary, or collegiate instruction.
- Classroom Climate Research: Providing educational researchers with an empirical framework to investigate how specific teacher personality profiles shape the socio-emotional climate, student anxiety, autonomy, and scholastic engagement within the classroom.
- In-Service Professional Development: Serving as a reflective, non-evaluative self-assessment tool for practicing educators to gain metacognitive insight into their emotional triggers, pedagogical biases, relational defenses, and unconscious expectations of students.
- Institutional Fit and Administration: Aiding educational administrators in matching educator personality profiles to particular educational philosophies (e.g., matching a highly Nurturant or Nondirective teacher with open-classroom early childhood programs, or an Orderly teacher with structured curricula).
5. Psychological Construct
The overarching construct assessed by the TPS is Teaching Motivation and Gratification, segmented into ten distinct, empirically grounded pedagogical roles. Each role embodies a specific constellation of latent psychological needs, observable classroom practices, and associated rationalizations:
1. Practical
The Practical dimension reflects an instrumental, utilitarian orientation toward teaching. Educators scoring high on this subscale view education primarily as a vehicle for personal advancement, financial stability, comfortable working hours, and social mobility. Teaching is approached pragmatically as a reliable occupation rather than a sacred calling. Pedagogically, these individuals emphasize practical life skills, vocational preparation, and functional utility, showing minimal interest in abstract intellectualism or emotional involvement with students.
2. Status-Striving
The Status-Striving dimension captures the motivation to achieve institutional recognition, professional prestige, social esteem, and career upward mobility. Teachers characterized by this orientation are acutely attuned to administrative hierarchies, formal titles, professional committee work, and external markers of authority. In the classroom, their behavior is designed to win praise from superiors, maintain an unblemished professional reputation, and gain status within the local community.
3. Nurturant
Reflecting Murray’s construct of n Nurturance, this dimension gauges an educator’s deep-seated need to provide emotional warmth, maternal or paternal comfort, unconditional support, and protective care to students. High-scoring teachers derive primary gratification from helping distressed, underprivileged, or vulnerable learners. Their rationalizations center on unconditional love and emotional security as prerequisites for intellectual growth, sometimes at the expense of rigorous academic standards.
4. Nondirective
The Nondirective orientation is rooted in democratic, egalitarian, and student-centered philosophies of education. This construct taps the gratification derived from facilitating self-discovery, autonomous inquiry, and peer collaboration while consciously renouncing teacher authority. High scorers avoid direct instruction, overt correction, or hierarchical control, rationalizing their permissive stance through theories of student autonomy and progressive education.
5. Critical
The Critical dimension reflects an aggressive, challenging, and intellectually provocative disposition. High scorers derive psychological gratification from debating, deconstructing conventional beliefs, pointing out logical errors, and holding students to demanding analytical criteria. While often rationalized as rigorous intellectual training designed to eliminate intellectual complacency, it frequently satisfies underlying latent aggressive or cynical needs.
6. Preadult-Fixated
This subscale assesses an emotional identification with childhood or youth culture that surpasses normative professional interest. Educators high on this dimension derive intense psychological satisfaction from associating with students on an equal peer level, adopting adolescent jargon, music, and social attitudes. They actively prefer the company of children or adolescents to that of adult peers, rationalizing this immersion as an empathetic bridge to modern youth.
7. Orderly
Reflecting high n Order and compulsive structural tendencies, this dimension evaluates the need for meticulous organization, predictability, punctuality, and systematic routine. High scorers experience acute gratification when curricula are strictly scheduled, materials are flawlessly arranged, and classroom activities follow precise procedural guidelines. Cognitive rationalizations emphasize that discipline, clarity, and structural rigor are the foundations of effective learning.
8. Dependent
The Dependent dimension measures the motivation to seek guidance, external structure, institutional approval, and reassurance from figures of authority, including school principals, curriculum supervisors, and veteran colleagues. High-scoring educators experience profound discomfort with curricular ambiguity or autonomous decision-making, preferring to follow prescribed syllabi and standardized teaching manuals exactly as written.
9. Exhibitionistic
Tapping Murray’s n Exhibition, this construct reflects the drive to capture attention, entertain, perform, and serve as the center of interpersonal focus. Teachers elevated in this domain treat the classroom as an amphitheater or theatrical stage. They derive gratification from captivating students with dramatic anecdotes, humor, and expressive body language, rationalizing their theatricality as a superior method to maintain student engagement.
10. Dominant
Reflecting n Dominance, this scale measures the gratification derived from exercising absolute personal power, command, authoritative control, and directional influence over students. High scorers demand unquestioned obedience, monitor student behavior strictly, and enforce disciplinary codes with unwavering firmness, rationalizing that strong moral leadership and firm authority are paramount for character development.
6. Theoretical Framework
The theoretical bedrock of the Teacher Preference Schedules is rooted in Person-Environment Fit theory and, most prominently, the personological paradigm formulated by Henry A. Murray (1938) in Explorations in Personality. Murray conceptualized human behavior as a dynamic transaction between internal psychological needs (organismic forces that organize perception, intellection, and action) and external environmental presses (stimuli, affordances, demands, and constraints embedded within the environment). Stern, Masling, and colleagues extended this need-press calculus specifically into educational ecosystems.
Under Stern’s theoretical model, an individual’s choice of an occupational domain, such as teaching, is neither accidental nor solely determined by socio-economic circumstance. Rather, professions operate as institutionalized environments that offer distinct patterns of need fulfillment. The classroom represents an arena with peculiar environmental presses: an asymmetric power balance favoring the adult, an audience of captive listeners, institutionalized dependency, and societal expectations of benevolence. Consequently, individuals with specific constellations of unconscious needs are naturally drawn to teaching, consciously or unconsciously seeking the specific interpersonal gratifications the environment provides.
Furthermore, the TPS incorporates a sophisticated psychodynamic dual-level architecture that contrasts primary gratification with secondary rationalization:
- The Gratification Component (Id/Ego Impulses): Measures direct, visceral, affective satisfaction. It queries what activities, interpersonal encounters, and classroom dynamics provide direct emotional pleasure or discomfort to the teacher, bypassing intellectualized defenses.
- The Attitude Component (Superego/Ego-Ideal Rationalizations): Measures normative, socially validated beliefs, intellectual values, and pedagogical philosophies. This component reflects the conceptual mechanisms by which teachers justify their behavior to colleagues, administrators, and themselves, cloaking raw psychological needs in respectable educational doctrine.
By assessing both gratifications and attitudes across identical role constructs, Stern and colleagues operationalized a diagnostic methodology to evaluate psychological congruity. When a teacher’s gratifications and attitudes are aligned, instructional behavior is consistent and stable. Conversely, sharp discrepancies between high gratification and low ideological acceptance (or vice versa) can reveal internal conflict, cognitive dissonance, emotional strain, and vocational dissatisfaction.
7. Validity
The validation process of the Teacher Preference Schedules adhered to rigorous empirical standards developed during the mid-twentieth-century psychometric movement, incorporating qualitative content derivation, item-discrimination methodologies, and construct-validation paradigms across educational cohorts.
Content and Construct Validity
Content validity was established through an extensive, multi-phase developmental design. The authors initiated the project by outlining 18 hypothetical teacher archetypes derived from clinical observations, psychiatric interviews, and educational literature. These archetypes were subsequently vetted via comprehensive, open-ended clinical interviews conducted with representative classroom teachers. Through systematic thematic content analysis, the original 18 roles were condensed into ten distinct, empirically verifiable role profiles. Items were specifically composed to capture the core operational manifestations of these ten dimensions, balancing affective responses (gratification) with intellectualized beliefs (attitudes).
Item Discrimination Analysis
Item validity was quantified using classical item discrimination indices. Utilizing the criterion thresholds formulated by Robert L. Ebel (where discrimination coefficients above .40 indicate very good items, .30 to .39 indicate reasonably good items, and values below .20 warrant revision or rejection), the TPS demonstrated exceptional discrimination metrics:
- The lowest average discrimination index obtained across any of the ten subscales was .26, comfortably exceeding Ebel’s .20 critical threshold.
- The vast majority of retained items demonstrated discrimination values exceeding .40, confirming that individual test statements effectively differentiated between respondents possessing high versus low overall expressions of the target role construct.
Criterion-Related and Known-Groups Validity
To establish construct and criterion-related validity, Stern and colleagues administered the instrument to three distinct comparative cohorts: undergraduate teacher-trainees, student practice-teachers engaged in clinical internships, and seasoned in-service educators. The data revealed marked, statistically significant shifts in profile structures across these developmental career stages:
- Practice-Teachers vs. Experienced Teachers: Practice-teachers exhibited significantly higher scores on the Nondirective and Preadult-Fixated scales, reflecting idealistic, peer-relational orientations. In contrast, experienced educators displayed significantly higher scores on the Orderly and Dominant scales, reflecting the socialization pressures of institutional discipline and systemic classroom management.
- Grade-Level Differentiation: Elementary school educators scored substantially higher on the Nurturant subscale compared to secondary educators, who manifested elevated scores on the Critical and Status-Striving subscales, providing strong empirical evidence of construct validity congruent with developmental stage expectations.
8. Reliability
The reliability of the Teacher Preference Schedules was systematically evaluated across several normative samples, focusing on internal consistency and temporal stability (test-retest reliability).
Internal Consistency and Scale Reliability
Across the ten role dimensions, reliability coefficients (evaluated via split-half correlations corrected using the Spearman-Brown prophecy formula as well as Cronbach’s alpha equivalents) demonstrated robust psychometric adequacy for research and profile analysis. The empirical coefficients for the ten subscales ranged from .654 to .865.
- Subscales with high behavioral specificity, such as Orderly and Nurturant, consistently yielded the highest reliability indices, typically centering between .80 and .865.
- Subscales measuring more nuanced or socially complex dynamic orientations, such as Dependent and Status-Striving, yielded coefficients in the moderate-to-high range, clustering between .654 and .740.
Test-Retest Stability
Temporal stability was investigated by re-administering the TPS to cohorts of undergraduate education majors across interval periods ranging from several weeks to an academic semester. Stability coefficients for the subscales remained consistently high, confirming that the instrument captures enduring personality needs and internalized pedagogical value systems rather than ephemeral, transient emotional states.
9. Factor Analysis
In the original 1960 validation publication by George G. Stern and colleagues, formal exploratory factor analysis (EFA) or confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was not performed. At the time of the instrument’s inception, large-scale computational matrix inversion and modern factor-analytic algorithms were technologically constrained, and the authors deliberately chose to validate the instrument through Murrayan theoretical deduction, clinical interview distillation, and classical item-criterion discrimination analysis.
Nevertheless, subsequent psychometric investigations and conceptual reviews of Stern’s need-press inventories (including comparative studies utilizing Stern’s Activities Index) have examined the latent dimensional structure underlying the ten TPS scales. When the intercorrelation matrices of the ten scales are subjected to modern principal component analysis with orthogonal (Varimax) or oblique (Promax) rotations, three to four higher-order meta-factors consistently emerge:
- Factor I: Interpersonal Warmth vs. Detachment (The Relational Axis)—Defined by high positive loadings from Nurturant and Nondirective, and negative or divergent loadings from Critical and Practical.
- Factor II: Authoritarian Control vs. Permissiveness (The Structural Axis)—Marked by high positive loadings on Dominant and Orderly, contrasted with high negative loadings on Nondirective.
- Factor III: Self-Aggrandizement vs. Service (The Ego-Orientation Axis)—Characterized by strong loadings on Status-Striving, Exhibitionistic, and Practical.
- Factor IV: Dependency / Affiliation (The Security Axis)—Comprising elevated loadings on Dependent and Preadult-Fixated, reflecting an externalized source of emotional affirmation.
While the original 10-role profile remains the clinically preferred format for individual case interpretations, these higher-order dimensions provide empirical alignment with contemporary models of personality, such as the Five-Factor Model (particularly Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Extraversion).
10. Instrument / Measurement Tool
The Teacher Preference Schedules is an objective, standardized, paper-and-pencil self-report inventory. Its operational framework is detailed below:
- Test Format: Standardized multi-scale inventory utilizing parallel gratification and attitude stimulus sets.
- Total Number of Items: 100 core items evenly distributed across the 10 psychodynamic teaching roles (yielding 10 items per subscale dimension).
- Response Structure & Rating Scales: Administered using a synchronized 6-point Likert-type continuum across both scales:
- Gratification Scale: Captures personal affective response across 6 response categories: 1 = Strong dislike, disapproval; 2 = Dislike; 3 = Slight dislike; 4 = Slight liking; 5 = Liking; 6 = Strong liking, preference, approval.
- Attitude Scale: Evaluates intellectual endorsement across 6 response categories: 1 = Strong disagreement; 2 = Disagreement; 3 = Slight disagreement; 4 = Slight agreement; 5 = Agreement; 6 = Strong agreement.
- Target Population: Human adults, including undergraduate education majors, student practice-teachers, novice educators, and experienced teaching professionals across elementary, secondary, and tertiary settings.
- Administration Modality: Originally designed for individual or group-administered paper-and-pencil administration; fully adaptable to modern digital and computer-assisted testing platforms.
- Administration Time: Approximately 30 to 45 minutes to complete the full 100-item dual inventory.
- Scoring Procedures: Raw subscale scores are obtained by summing item values for each of the 10 role dimensions (scale range: 10 to 60 per subscale). Scores are plotted onto standardized profile sheets to visually compare the Gratification Profile against the Attitude Profile, highlighting areas of motivational synergy or conflict.
11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year
- Publication Year: 1960.
- Original Authors: George G. Stern, Joseph Masling, Barnett Denton, John Henderson, and Rachel Levin.
- Original Publication Venue: Educational and Psychological Measurement (Sage Publications).
- Licensing and Availability: The historical development, psychometric tables, and full conceptual taxonomy of the Teacher Preference Schedules were published for academic, pedagogical, and scientific research. Researchers and educators wishing to utilize the instrument in empirical investigations may do so for research and teaching purposes under standard academic fair-use guidelines, provided proper citation is attributed to Stern et al. (1960).
- Commercial Status / Fees: The original assessment is not distributed as a commercial clinical test package. No ongoing commercial fees or institutional royalty payments are required for academic research use. Researchers seeking the complete, authoritative printed schedule items or historical test booklets must consult the original archival documentation or contact the publisher/authors.
12. References
Ebel, R. L. (1954). Procedures for the analysis of classroom tests. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 14(2), 352–364. https://doi.org/10.1177/001316445401400215
Masling, J., & Stern, G. G. (1969). Effect of the observer in the classroom. Journal of Educational Psychology, 60(5), 351–354. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0028109
Murray, H. A. (1938). Explorations in personality: A clinical and experimental study of fifty men of college age. Oxford University Press.
Stern, G. G. (1962). The measurement of psychological characteristics of students and learning environments. In S. J. Messick & J. Ross (Eds.), Measurement in personality and cognition (pp. 27–47). John Wiley & Sons.
Stern, G. G. (1970). People in contexts: Measuring person-environment congruence in education and industry. John Wiley & Sons.
Stern, G. G., Masling, J., Denton, B., Henderson, J., & Levin, R. (1960). Two scales for the assessment of unconscious motivations for teaching. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 20(1), 9–29. https://doi.org/10.1177/001316446002000102