Research Information System
2. Uluslar arası 19 Mayıs Yenilikçi Bilimsel Yaklaşımlar Kongresi, Samsun, Turkey, 27 - 29 December 2019, pp.260-274, (Full Text)
Teacher educators are the sine qua non for the education and development of teacher candidates.
They are associated with several roles such as providing good instruction and materials, guiding
for education, supporting teacher candidates in an inspiring way, contributing to student development,
serving as a model, to list but a few. Although the characteristics of a good teacher have
received by far the most attention, there is a series of studies investigating the qualities of teacher
educators. However, for a fuller picture the existing literature needs to be expanded to cover studies
focusing on the essential qualities of language teacher educator in particular. To this end, the
current qualitative case study was designed to seek a deeper understanding of teacher candidates’
perceptions about the qualities of effective language teacher educator. The qualitative data were
gathered via an open-ended survey from 96 prospective teachers at 3rd and 4th grade (F=80;
M=16) and an interview (n=10). The findings gathered via a thematic content analysis show that
the candidates attached great importance to various professional roles and values such as professional
development, a transparent assessment, a constructivist teaching philosophy, justice, good
classroom management, to list but a few. The candidates also highlighted various personal characteristics
such as tolerance, friendly attitude, sympathy, and patience as well as good communication
skills. The metaphor analysis further show that the candidates created positive metaphors
emphasising the illuminative and guiding function of educators while the negative ones focused
on strict control and demotivation. It can be concluded that teacher candidates value language
teacher educators who can serve as teacher models for them with their continuing professional
development, teaching expertise, good personality traits, and communication skills. The results of
such small-scale studies could help paint a consistent picture about who should be appointed as
an effective language teacher educator and thus assist those responsible for the development of
teacher education programmes and appointment of educators to devise professional standards
covering the characteristics and competencies of language teacher educators.