In my Master’s Degree I have tried to answer a question about what kind of a teacher the pupils wish for and what are their expectations about him. In my opinion the pupils are quite modest about it but despite that we do not listen to their opinions or even turn to advantage our own potentials because we, ourselves, are not aware of them. The teacher’s personal characteristics and actions strongly influence the child’s attitude towards the school, the topics, their motivation, their learning and its success etc. I have collected and compared the findings and opinions of different authors who deal with the qualities a teacher should have in comparison to a model of a teacher the pupils like. Furthermore I have explored the definitions of the teacher’s tasks according to different authors and curricular documents. I have presented the teacher’s influence on the climate and interpersonal relations in a class, and how content the pupils are with their relationships and the way the class is managed.
In the empiric part of my work I have researched the opinions the pupils hold when beginning their schooling: what makes a good teacher, how he should act and what his tasks are. I have compared their answers with the teachers’ opinions on what, according to them, are the young learners expectations and whether they find them important and why. Both results were compared to society’s goals and competences. The descriptive method has been used for the research and it was done on a sample of two classes of the first-year pupils and 100 class-teachers. The results of the interviews with the children and the analysis of their drawings have shown what qualities they expect in a teacher: kindness, fairness, being funny, goodness, playfulness, help etc. The teacher is expected to listen to them, understand them, make them feel safe and encourage their feeling of responsibility. What the pupils find important are the moral and ethical qualities and the behaviour of a person. Their description includes the realistic, non-idealized figure of a teacher who is sometimes angry. It is important that all these qualities are intertwined in equilibrium and founded by a competent response of the teacher. The teacher can correct his less appreciated behaviour and qualities but he has to be ready to encounter criticism, accept it and incorporate it in his personal and professional development. In my estimation the pupils are not too demanding in their expectations. The expectations are in accordance with the curricular documents concerning the education of the teachers and their expected competences.
The results of the research show that the teachers, under the pressure of society, get the feeling that the pupils’ ideas about the teacher’s tasks are unrealistic because they expect him to be universal and perfect. At the same time they see pupils as the ones emphasizing their rights and ignoring their duties what is, of course, unfounded. I have learnt on the basis of my research that the pupils prefer those teachers who can manage the class well (help, lead, encourage responsibility) and along the way get to know and take into account the children’s opinions. The research shows how important it is to study the teacher’s qualities, his behaviour and the influence he has on the pupils’ contentment.
|
