Morale of Teachers of Mentally Retarded Children: An Exploratory Investigation

With regular and special education teachers as subjects, a study of the morale of certain special education teachers was undertaken. The 10 factor analytically grounded subtests of the Purdue Teacher Opinionaire were used. The results showed no reliable differences between responses of regular and EMR elementary school teachers. Secondary female teachers of the retarded were reliably more dissatisfied with their status, curriculum issues, and relationships with other teachers. Male secondary EMR teachers tended to perceive greater rapport with their fellow teachers than did regular teachers. Elementary TMR teachers saw themselves as having relatively low status compared to regular elementary teachers. In a small sample of EMR and TMR teachers’ morale (except in one special sample) was found to be unrelated to respondents’ being located in a special or in a regular school, or to whether or not the respondent was the only special teacher in the school building. However, findings are viewed as tentative because of the small sample size and other sampling problems.