Arthur W. Combs

The Helping Relationship As Described By "Good" and "Poor" Teachers

A number of writers have suggested that the characteristics of the helping relationship may be the same wherever these relationships occur. In a previous experiment Soper and Combs’ demonstrated that superior teachers describe the helping relationship in a fashion highly similar to the descriptions of expert therapists. They found the opinions of a highly select group of teachers in a university laboratory school correlated .809 with the ideal relationship Q sort of a group of expert therapists reported by Fiedler.2 2 Apparently good teachers and therapists are in agreement about the nature of a helping relationship. But will the same condition hold true for