Prospective Elementary Teachers' Views on Their Teachers and Their Effectiveness

In this paper future elementary teachers reflect on their past experiences and talk about their teachers and the way they were taught, and portray the characteristics of effective and not so effective teachers. The study also highlights Turkish teachers` way of instruction and the strategies they use. Participants were 41 sophomore and 62 junior prospective elementary teachers enrolled in a small university in northeastern Turkey. Data were collected using mostly the document analysis techniques. Findings show that effective teachers are caring, loving, funny, and patient, show special in and out of class interest in students, and are fair to everyone. Not so effective teachers are out of temper, fear imposing, using abusive language, authoritarian, using violence, unfair and discriminating between students, and boring in class.