Evaluating Teachers as Social Agents: Students’ Ratings of Domain Appropriate and Domain Inappropriate Teacher Responses to Transgressions

Abstract

This study examined if students evaluate teachers as respondents to social transgression on the basis of whether the teacher provides responses that are concordant with the domain (i.e., moral or conventional) of the transgressions. Findings were that students rated domain appropriate (DA) teacher responses higher than domain inappropriate (DIA) or domain undifferentiated (command) responses. In addition, subjects were found to generalize their ratings of responses to their ratings of the teachers. Subjects rated teachers employing DA responses higher than subjects employing DIA responses