ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to chart some common features of the implicit personality systems which primary school teachers have of their pupils, and to ascertain how personal characteristics of the teachers affect these systems as represented by repertory grids. For male teachers dogmatism did not influence the already high correlations between academic and behavioural perceptions, though in the case of the other two correlations, between the perception of academic and personality and of behaviour and personality characteristics, correlations did increase with higher dogmatism scores. The findings also indicate that the importance attached to academic perceptions of pupils appears to vary according to the sex of the teacher, with male teachers, more often than female teachers, appearing to overestimate the influence of academic success and failure in their views of children. The relatively high correlation between academic and personality attributes of pupils may be due to the teachers emphasising the ascription of personal, as opposed to situational, explanations of the pupils' actions.
