Perceived Relative Importance of Content and Process to Effective Teaching.

A study was made of the attitudes of educators toward the relative importance of mastery of subject matter and mastery of teaching skills in teacher education programs. Three groups were sampled: 687 public school teachers, 448 public school principals, and 182 members of local boards of public schools. Responses to a mailed questionnaire revealed that 74.5 percent of the surveyed population perceived teaching processes to be of greater importance to effective teaching than was content expertise. An analysis is presented of these findings of opinions within each group, and comparisons are made among groups. The perceptions of the 23.9 percent of the respondents who perceived content to be of greater importance are also examined. Implications for teacher education programs are discussed and recommendations are made on maintaining an appropriate balance between necessary content mastery and process mastery. A copy of the questionnaire is appended, as well as a tabular breakdown of data results by groups and individual characteristics of the respondents. (JD)