Characteristics of Effective Teachers: Perceptions of Preservice Teachers.

The purpose of this study was to determine preservice teachers' perceptions about the characteristics of effective teachers, as well as to investigate factors (e.g., gender, ethnicity, age, year of study, area of specialization, and parental status) that may have influenced their responses. Participants were 219 students attending a large mid-southern university. These students were administered a questionnaire asking them to identify, to rank, and to define between 3 and 6 characteristics that they believed excellent teachers possess or demonstrate. A phenomenological analysis (i.e., method of constant comparison) of responses revealed several characteristics that many of the preservice teachers considered to reflect effective teaching. In order of endorsement level, the following six themes emerged from these characteristics: (1) student-centeredness (79.5%), (2) enthusiasm for teaching (40.2%), (3) ethicalness (38.8%), (4) classroom and behavior management (33.3%), (5) teaching methodology (32.4%), and (6) knowledge of subject (31.5%). A canonical correlation analysis revealed that females, college-level juniors, and minority students tended to endorse teacher characteristics that were classified as ethical and teaching methodology to a greater extent than did their counterparts and to rate attributes that were associated with knowledge of subject and classroom and behavior management to a lesser degree. Age served as a suppressor variable. The implications of these findings are discussed, as are recommendations for future research.