Cross-Cultural Comparison of Teachers’ Caring Behaviors Between Taiwan and the United States

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 3:20 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Implications for Teacher Education: Using Moral Perspective (Table 9)

Abstract

Student-teacher caring relationships impact students’ academic and social-emotional development. Nel Noddings’ conception of care is frequently employed in educational research on care and is the foundation for the Caring Relationship Survey (CRS), recently developed and tested in the US. The current study builds on prior research by using the CRS in a different cultural context. Two related questions are addressed: (1) Are factor structures based on best-fitting confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) models similar for US and Taiwan teachers? (2) Do teachers’ conceptions of care differ across cultural contexts? Results indicate consistent factor structures across countries (five sub-constructs as first-order factors), while mean comparisons suggest that some conceptions of care differ across countries. Potential reasons for these differences are discussed

Authors

• Te-Hsin Chang, National Taipei University

• Suzanne E. Graham, University of New Hampshire