Teacher's and student's congruence in perception of teaching activities and school subjects

Educational research suggests that the choice of the teaching strategy does influence students’ perception of the teaching, learning of overall school curriculum. Hence, it is of crucial importance to assure that the chosen teaching method does not conflict with characteristics, needs and perceptions of the students (George & Alexander, 2003). Therefore, in this paper we compare teachers’ and students’ perception of teaching activities and school subjects. The data was collected as a part of a large-scale national survey of 2134 subject teachers and 2674 students from 121 elementary school in Croatia. Spearman's rho correlation coefficient was used to determine the congruence between teachers’ and students’ assessment of the frequency of teaching activities and perception of certain dimensions of school subjects. The statistical analysis showed statistically non-significant correlation between students’ and teachers’ perception of the frequency of certain teaching activities. Teacher-student congruence in perceptions of school subjects was determined according to the following dimensions: interestingness, difficulty, usefulness in current life and importance for the future life. The only statistically significant correlation was found for the perception of difficulty. These results demonstrate that there is a high congruence between teachers and students in their estimation of how difficult a subject is relative to the other subjects, while such congruence does not exist for the other three dimensions. This is probably due to the fact that both students and teachers share the same indicator of subject difficulty - subject grades, while the other three dimensions are more fluid and thus more subject to the different judgments of teachers’ and students’ . This study indicates that there are substantial differences between teachers and students in their perception of teaching activities and school subjects. Given the importance of students’ perceptions, it is crucial for teachers to recognize the needs and opinions of their students.