Measuring teacher authenticity: Criteria students use in their perception of teacher authenticity

Abstract

Authenticity is an often-heard term with respect to education. Tasks should be authentic, the learning environment should be authentic and, above all, the teacher should be authentic. Previous qualitative research has shown that there are four primary criteria that students in formal educational settings use when forming their perceptions of teacher authenticity, namely: Expertise, Passion, Unicity and Distance. This quantitative study validates these qualitative results and finds a possible variation of the original theoretical model in which there is no distinction made by students between Expertise and Passion, and the criterion of Distance is split into two new criteria: Strictness and Proximity.

Keywords

• teacher authenticity
• authenticity
• teacher–student relationship
• secondary education