A Discussion of What Makes a Good Teacher: Opinions of Pre-Service Primary School Teachers

AbstractAs being the most important subject of the teaching process, the qualities of teachers naturally influence and shape the quality of learning in schools. Teachers start developing the qualities they need to perform their jobs, during their education at teacher training institutions. This study is designed to determine the conceptions of pre-service primary school teachers at Muğla University about what qualities a good teacher needs to have. It was also aimed to see whether there is an awareness among these prospective teachers about how much they own these qualities which they value. The terminology “good teacher” is used to make the pre-service teachers think again on the qualities not for teachers generally but especially for a good teacher to obtain the most desired qualities. For this purpose, a qualitative research was designed. 90 first grade and 90 fourth grade pre-service teachers were asked two open ended questions. The questions and the number of the sample are the same as Drvodelic and Rajic's (2011) study on Croatian pre-service teachers so that a comparison could be made between two cultures and the results of these two researches will be combined for a further study. Firstly, pre-service teachers were asked to determine five qualities that a good teacher needs to have and rank them by importance and then they were asked to rank the same qualities by regarding their own level of possession. The data was analysed using both a qualitative and a quantitative approach. Qualitative approach was used for thematic coding analysis of the qualities. The data was categorised based on personal and professional qualities. After that, they were analysed through a quantitative method for the frequencies and the rank order. The results showed that, both first year and fourth year pre-service teachers mentioned more personal qualities than professional qualities