Published Paper Details:

Abstract of the Study Values play a vital role in determining individual behaviour, decision making and managerial success. But the instances of deteriorating standard of human conduct and neglect of social concern are quite numerous in the recent history of our country in all walks of national life, and the prevailing crisis of character has therefore, stirred nation-wide interest of people for a critical appraisal of school practices and our educational programmers. The quality of teachers and teaching schools and school products has now become a subject of the deepest national concern. In the aforesaid context of the national situation, a vigorous programme of value-oriented education is the need of the hour in order to safeguard the present set-up of society form further degeneration and deterioration. In fact, it is the teachers who can play a significant role for the development of values. But it can happen only when teachers have their own values so that, they in turn can pass on the same to the children. Again, since family is considered as the first school of human being, the different family structure may have influence on the personal values of prospective teachers. Similarly, locality may be a factor for development of personal values. Therefore, the present study is an attempt to explore the personal values of students studying in teacher education institute and to examine the influence of family structures as well as of locality on their personal values. Survey method was adopted to explore the levels and patterns personal values of student-teachers and to examine the influence of family structure and locality on personal values of prospective teachers. Initially, 100 student teachers studying in College of Teacher Education, Balasore were selected as the sample of the study on the basis of purposive sampling technique. However, the final sample comprised of 86 subjects due to experimental mortality. A Personal Data Sheet was used to obtain information on the family structure and locality of the prospective teachers and Personal Values Questionnaire developed by Sherry, G. P. and Verma, R. P. (2005) was used to gather data on personal values of the subjects. The data were analysed objective wise by applying various statistical techniques. Data were analysed by first converting the obtained raw scores of the subjects into T-scores and then by employing statistical techniques such as, Mean, Standard deviation and t-test. The results of the study indicated that prospective teachers in general possessed high level social, democratic and knowledge values. The prospective teachers belonging to joint family alone possessed high level of health value. Types of family did not exert significant influence on personal values of prospective teachers. There was significant influence of family size on economic value of prospective teachers since the subjects belonging to small family were found to have possessed significantly better economic values than their big family counterparts. However, in other dimensions of personal values, no influence of family size was observed. There was significant influence of locality on economic value of prospective teachers since the subjects belonging to rural area were found to have possessed significantly better economic values than their rural area counterparts. However, in other dimensions of personal values, influence of locality was not observed.