Abstract:

The present study explored the impact of the personality and demographic characteristics of educational instructors and their behavior towards adolescents in juvenile correctional institutions. The study investigated the variables of authoritarian personality, ethnic affiliation and level of religiosity as predictors of educational instructors' authority-exercising style in discipline encounters. The subjects were all the educational instructors (320 instructors) from 56 institutions, and the research tools were developed and adapted for the purposes of the present study. The research findings corroborated the hypothesis that educational instructors with a high level of authoritarianism will respond by more power assertion and withdrawal to the inmates during disciplinary encounters. While instructors with a low level of authoritarianism will respond by induction during these events. Moreover, the findings demonstrated that ethnicity and level of religiosity predicted the authority-exercising style of the educational instructors. Arab educational instructors as well as Jewish religious instructors that have the cultural-individualistic outlook were more inclined to respond by power assertion during disciplinary encounters. The importance of the present study is in its attempt to interconnect personality, environmental and behavioral characteristics, and calls for follow up research that will include additional personality and environment variables which will allow a deeper understanding of educational instructors' behaviors in juvenile correctional institutions.

Keywords:

Educational instructor, juvenile correctional institution, therapeutic-educational climate, disciplinary encounters.