PERSONALITY TRAITS OF PROSPECTIVE TEACHERS

An admirable teaching personality is one in which the teacher's personality contributes to the creation and maintenance of a classroom or learning environment in which pupils are happy and motivated to study. The personality traits enhance teaching because even when there is no verbal contact between the instructor and the student, communication does occur. The purpose of this research is to determine the level of whole personality traits in total and other traits like extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness of prospective teachers with respect to gender. A total of three hundereden and three prospective teachers from ten different B.Ed colleges in Salem and Namakkal Districts of Tamilnadu are taking part in the study. The research tool Big Five Personality Inventory designed and standardized by John, O. P., and Srivastava, S. (1999) was utilized to collect the data. The findings indicated that the majority of prospective teachers have average personality traits in total and other traits. Gender influences the personality traits in total, extraversion, openness, and neuroticism. The female prospective teachers have low neuroticism scores which show that they are more stable and emotionally resilient when compared to their male counterparts. Individuals with high levels of this attribute are more likely to have mood swings, anxiety, impatience, and sorrow. The highest score of neuroticism of male counterparts which resembles that they are need to be oriented with ill effects of neuroticism. Proper assessment and orientation should be given to male counterparts in order to alleviate them from ill effects of neuroticism which is a personality trait that is characterized by sorrow, irritability, and emotional instability