The effects of getting a new teacher on the consistency of personality

Abstract

Objective: In the present research, we examined the effect of getting a new teacher on consistency in students’ personality measures, including trait and social cognitive constructs. Method: To test the effect of this kind of situational transition, we analyzed two large longitudinal samples (N = 5,628; N = 2,458) with quasi-experimental study designs. We used two consistency measures (i.e., rank-order clations and changes in variance over time) to compare students who got a new teacher with students who kept the same teacher. Results: Multiple-group latent variable analyses showed no differences in the rank-order correlations for the math-related social cognitive constructs of interest, effort, self-concept, self-regulation, anxiety, and the Big Five personality traits. Significantly lower rank-order correlations were found for some of the German- and English-related social cognitive constructs (i.e., effort measures) for the group of students who got a new teacher. Regarding the changes in variance (over time), we found no systematic differences between groups in both studies. Conclusions: We found partial support for the idea that social cognitive variables are more susceptible to environmental changes (i.e., getting a new teacher) than the Big Five personality traits are.