Qualities of a Good English Language Teacher from the Perspectives of Textbook Authors in the Field of Language Teaching, Teachers, and Learners

Abstract

Researchers in the field of language teaching have long been fascinated by the qualities of good teachers. Such qualities have rarely been approached qualitatively from different angles in a single study. Thus, this research aimed to unearth the qualities in question by employing a qualitative multimethod approach. To this end, 23 randomly selected standard language teaching textbooks were analyzed by two coders using qualitative content analysis. The judiciously adopted codes from the analysis were employed to design and carry out semi-structured interviews with nine effective language teachers as well as ten good learners nominated via purposeful sampling. The data gleaned from the semi-interviews were once again analyzed through qualitative content analysis. The collective initial coding of the three datasets resulted in thirteen themes: knowledge of pedagogy, rapport, critical thinking, empathy, rhetoric, knowledge of subject matter, enthusiasm, respect, humor, consciousness, fairness, authenticity, and physical attributes. Conducting a second-level coding, we uncovered two broad themes, namely personality and professionalism with the former being significantly weightier collectively. The application of Chi-Square at this point showed that the associations between the three datasets were meaningful. The findings of the semi-structured interviews of participant teachers and students corroborated those of authors in the field of language teaching. Also, rapport and pedagogy were respectively viewed as the most salient attributes associated with good language teachers by the interviewed informants. The study holds clear implications for interested researchers, language teachers, and teacher educators.