Adam is an experienced primary school teacher who recently relocated to Hong Kong from the UK. He now teaches Year Four in a bilingual PYP school. Adam is passionate about educating the ‘whole child’ and preparing students for their futures. Follow him on Twitter @AhillAdam and click here to read his education blog.

A few months ago, I published a post titled ‘Our duty as role models’. I matter-of-factly stated that teachers are role models and that students are influenced by our behaviors. Learning Scientist Dr. Yana Weinstein praised my post on social media, but questioned whether the post had any backing from scientific research. Admittedly, it was written based entirely on my own experiences and what seemed like logical common sense.

The questioned remained: is there any solid research evidence that teachers are role models? Or, is there evidence to suggest that we are not as influential as we think we are? My research led me to these studies:

The Social Learning Theory

In the early 60s, psychologist Albert Bandura conducted his famous Bobo Doll experiment to test his theory that behaviors are learned through observation, imitation and modeling.

The experiment, conducted on 72 children (aged 3-6), was designed to find out to what extent the children would imitate the behavior of adults (‘models’). The children were separated into groups and the groups were exposed to either an aggressive model, a non-aggressive model, or no model at all. Children with models first observed the adult’s behavior towards the dolls. The children were then given a variety of toys while Bandura observed their aggression towards them. (To read about the experiment in more detail, click here.)

In general, the children who observed the aggressive models later displayed more aggressive behavior themselves, compared to both the children who observed non-aggressive models or those in the control condition who did not observe anyone.

In addition, the experiment also showed that boys tended to imitate male models, but not female ones (in both the aggressive and non-aggressive groups). On the other hand, the girls were influenced by either gender. A particular need for positive male role models in school is implicated by these results.

The image below shows Bandura’s theory of how behaviors are observed (input) and eventually adopted (output). He acknowledges that there are cognitive factors at play that affect the likelihood of behaviors being copied.