Qualifications of an Ideal Teacher according to Social Studies Preservice Teachers

In this study, the question of what kind of qualifications an ideal social studies teacher has tried to be investigated. For this purpose, freshman social studies preservice teachers' perceptions about the concept of "ideal teacher". were explored. This study was designed with document analysis, one of the methods of qualitative approach. In this case, in total 234 social studies preservice teachers (111 female and 123 male), studying in Karadeniz Technical University Fatih Faculty of Education, were employed. The data were collected on 27 and 28th of October 2010 in the early weeks of 2010-2011 academic years. Before collecting data, researchers informed participants about the aim of study. Then participants started to write compositions individually to describe the qualifications of the ideal teacher by concerning their teachers affecting mostly them in the past. Besides, it was remembered that these compositions will preserve for 4 years, then they will rewrite compositions like this, and finally these compositions will compare and it will try to be examined pedagogical courses effect their perceptions about the ideal teacher. Collected data were analyzed through content analysis. In this case, participants perceptions were presented with frequencies, percentages and direct citations from documents. The results of the study showed that an ideal teacher have some qualifications such as being good communication with students, being successful in education-teaching activities and subject-matters, being compassionate, well-behaved and tolerant.