Fiedler's Contingency Model postulates that the effectiveness of leaders results from a relationship between leadership style and situational favorability. Leadership style is measured with Fiedler's Least Preferred Coworker Scale, which assesses whether the person rating the coworker is task-oriented or oriented towards interpersonal relations. Situational favorability is a measure of the degree to which the situation of the work group affects the leader's ability to influence group members. Situational factors include relations between group leaders and members, structuredness of tasks, and the extent of the leader's power. Fiedler's research indicated that task-oriented leaders achieved best results in either very favorable or very unfavorable situations, while relations-oriented leaders were most successful in less extreme situations. Several tests of Fiedler's theories have provided some degree of support and have inspired revisions and refinements. This paper reports on an attempt to determine whether task-oriented and human relations-oriented classroom teachers exhibit different classroom behavior, for purposes of validating Fiedler's assumptions concerning motivation. Fourteen faculty members at an eastern university were observed in teaching situations by three trained observers. The data gathered led to mixed results, indicating a need for further study, perhaps of a longitudinal nature. (Author/PGD)