Not at least the ‘Hattie-study’ re-emphasizes the relevance of the teacher’s person to students’ learning effects (cf. Hattie 2009). Its meta-analysis states that the change of the teacher’s point of view into a perspective that is adopting the students’ points of view is an elementary step in schooling. This finding corresponds with theoretical approaches of the symbolic interactionism resp. the ethnomethodology considering the teacher’s person as a relevant factor within learning processes and in relation to the students. Within this theoretical framework the teacher is up to mediate what students are able to perceive. But perspectives are rarely to define within cultural-heterogeneous classes as they usually are in schools, with the result that we don’t know much about the fit between teachers’ supply and students’ use (cf. Lüders 2011; Boyle, Charles 2011; Lipowsky 2010). Thus, empirical results of longitudinal surveys of teacher trainees proved a correlation between personality traits and learning receptivity (Mayr 2006). But what is identified when identifying the person of the teacher as a relevant one? Studies on this topic mostly prove the personality of teachers by self-reported assessments (e.g. Feldmann 1986). In this research area the Big Five-model seems to be an established approach to inspect personality on specific traits as it is proved to work well over heterogeneous Kulturkreise as well as to both self- and external-assessments (Asendorpf, Neyer 2012; Mayr 2011). The data found about the perception and assessments of the teachers’ personality by their students are quite rare and results quite vague to the topic of the presented research project as they focus at most on general teaching assessments (cf. Clayson, Sheffet 2006, Hattie 2009).

Furthermore, former studies gathering teaching quality by multi perspective data (cf. Clausen 2002; Helmke, Schneider, Weinert 1986; Helmke 2012) mainly used assessments of students at the junior high school (grades 6 resp. 8) and in addition those assessments exclusively were acquired from Math classes. Moreover, there are well-known drawbacks concerning especially the use of young students’ feedbacks as an evaluation-instrument on teaching quality because of its potential to be undifferentiated and biased. Concerning elder students it still seems to be an outstanding issue how far the students’ perception of teachers’ personality does affect the students’ feedback on different teaching characteristics.

In association, the following research questions of our presented study arise:

1. Do students’ perceptions of teachers’ personality traits (along the Big Five-model) affect students’ assessments of teaching characteristics?
2. Are there essential differences in students’ perceptions of teachers’ personality traits and instructional features between various subjects and/or classes/schools according to students’ composition or their interests?

The design of the study focusses the relevance of considering effects on students’ feedbacks in the empirical lesson research to give a vast view on the topic as possible. It is qualified to prove effects of the students’ perception of the teachers’ personality (along the Big Five-dimensions) to the students’ feedback on teaching characteristics (along established scales of teaching quality research as well as overall assessments of the teachers’ person and the teaching). By comparing the assessments of teaching characteristics and the perception of personality traits in different subjects, effects that are potentially biasing students’ feedbacks (e.g. the interest on the subject) are extracted. The results might extend the empirical base of research on this topic which is generally essential to foster lesson development by a better understanding of students learning receptivity. Furthermore they might give hints to make instruments of teaching evaluations more adaptive.

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