Sarason's context of productive learning: Towards the development of a measure to assess teacher goals

The authors developed a 40-item teacher-completed measure designed to asses s educational goals, including Sarason's concept of a context of productive learning (COPL). Elementary-level teachers from school across a range of s ociodemographic contexts rated the importance of each of several goals. Fac tor analysis identified four factors: Traditional Learning, Context of Prod uctive Learning(COPL), Teacher Control, and Meeting Requirements. Teachers who reported high levels of enjoyment of teaching and those teaching in the lower grades had higher scores on the COPL factor than their opposites. Al so, teachers who reported that their teaching objectives had been shaped mo re by personal values and experiences than by training and supervision had higher COPL factor scores. Needed future steps include refinement of its it em composition, replication with a larger sample, and exploration of its re lationship to (a) actual teacher behaviors in the classroom and (b) pertine nt child educational and behavioral outcomes. (C) 2001 John Wiley & Sons, I nc.