A Family Affair: Caring in Teaching and Implications for Teacher and Researcher Preparation

The purpose of this study was to explore how perceptions of remembered instances ofteacher caring in K-College impacted the motivation of a college student. Implicationsfor teacher preparation programs and educational research were then drawn from theseperceptions. The first part of the title “A Family Affair” stems from the fact that theauthors are members of the same family – Father, Mother, and Son. Both the father andmother had prior knowledge of some (not all) of the instances of caring and non-caringdescribed by their son and thus shared a privileged insider position that offered uniqueinsights while cooperative peer checking was used both during and after the interview tohelp promote the trustworthiness of findings. It was found that the degree of caringshown by teachers had a profound influence on the participant’s willingness to put fortheffort especially in those courses that were not his favorite subjects which suggests that astrong connection exists between caring and student motivation. An importantimplication of this study is that teachers and those responsible for teacher preparationprograms would benefit by being aware of the impact of caring on students’ engagementand attitude toward learning. If the ultimate purpose of educational research is tocontribute to effective teaching, then the “soft variable” of caring should be consideredan important component of researcher preparation. It is hoped that readers will find thisstudy to be transferable to the degree that it resonates with their own experience asteachers, students, and parents, and which we refer to as “experiential validity”.