Qualifications of a good teacher

Abstract

The faculty of Southern Oregon College of Education initiated, during 1953, an evaluation of the curriculum which educates elementary teachers. An exploratory committee was organized-to investigate the essential qualifications which would seem desirable in a good teacher. These qualifications, once determined, would then serve as guiding criteria in reorganizing the sequence and content of courses and in the elimination or addition of experiences for the teacher education student. Administrators, parents, teachers and students were personally interviewed during the year and asked five specific questions. Some thirty school administrators were solicited, who hired graduates of the college. Five were superintendents of systems consisting of at least ten school plants, five were superintendents of smaller school systems, of ten school plants or less, five were supervisors of large school systems, five were supervisors of the smaller school systems, five were principals of elementary schools consisting of at least twenty teachers and five were principals of elementary schools of ten teachers or less. Thirty parents were also interviewed. Ten of these parents had children in the first and second grades, ten had children in grades three and four, and ten had children in the fifth and sixth grades. Thirty elementary teachers were contacted; five teachers from each grade, first through the sixth. Twelve classrooms of children were interviewed, two classrooms for each grade, one through the sixth, giving a total of four hundred elementary children questioned. In all some two hundred elementary school systems were contacted. Finally one hundred twenty college students were interviewed, thirty from each year in college.