Abstract
A Thurstone-type attitude scale was used to assess the attitudes of a group of graduate student teachers towards the use of corporal punishment in schools on each of three occasions: before embarking on a period of six weeks’ teaching practice in schools; on completion of this period of practice; and at the end of one year in a substantive teaching post. Measured attitudes before and after the period of teaching practice were similar, but, by the end of the first year of teaching, there was a significant shift in favour of the use of corporal punishment. Splitting the sample into two subgroups, those who were, and were not, having difficulty with discipline, revealed that the overall shift in attitude could be largely accounted for by changes in the attitudes of those who were having discipline problems.
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