APPLICATION: CHILDREN ’S TEMPERAMENTS AND SCHOOL
Most of us have been exposed at one time or another to a parent ’s or grand
parent ’s description of the strict and regimented way teachers used to run
their classes “when I was a kid.” According to these stories, all children were
treated alike. Each was expected to sit quietly during reading period, to work
at the pace set by the teacher, and above all, to pay full attention at all times.
Any deviations from the routine were met with strict and sometimes severe
punishment.
Although the accuracy of these descriptions might be challenged, teachers
today do not approach their job the same way they did a few generations ago.One important difference between teaching then and teaching now is an aware-
ness that not all children approach learning the same way. Because children areborn with different temperaments, some jump right in and begin participating
in lessons, but others are slow to warm up to new tasks. Some students have
difficulty focusing their attention on any one activity for very long, whereasother students become frustrated when forced to move on to a new assignment
before they are ready.
In fact, the transition from a familiar home environment to an unfamiliar
classroom is just the kind of event that is likely to highlight differences intemperament. This was illustrated in a study in which researchers used mea-
sures of inhibition taken at age 21 months to predict how children would
react upon entering kindergarten (Gersten, 1989). Observers watched the
children during a relatively unstructured free-play period their first day of
school. The children who had earlier been identified as inhibited responded
to this unfamiliar situation by keeping to themselves and watching their new
classmates. Compared to their classmates, the inhibited children were less
likely to play with the other boys and girls, to touch other children, or even
to laugh. Clearly inhibited and uninhibited children respond very differently
to the first day of class, and researchers find these differences often continue
throughout the school year (Gersten, 1989).
One team of investigators identified nine temperamental differences that
affect a child’ s performance in school (Chess & Thomas, 1996; Thomas &
Chess, 1977). As shown in Table 9.2, children ’s temperament can vary in
terms of activity level, adaptability, approach or withdrawal, distractibility,
intensity, mood, persistence, rhythmicity, and threshold. However, research
with these nine dimensions led to the identification of three basic tempera-ment patterns among elementary school children. First, there is the easy child,
who eagerly approaches new situations, is adaptive, and generally experiencesa positive mood. Most teachers would probably prefer an entire classroomfull of these students. However, classes are likely to include some examples
of the difficult child . These children tend to withdraw rather than approach
new situations, have difficulty adapting to new environments, and are often
in a negative mood. A classroom is also likely to include some children who
fall in the third general pattern, the slow-to-warm-up child . These children
are similar to the inhibited children described earlier in the chapter. They
tend to withdraw from unfamiliar situations and are slow to adapt to new
academic tasks and new activities.Application: Children’ s Temperaments and School 239