The Viewpoints of Instructors about the Effects of Teacher Education Programs on Prospective Teachers? Affective Characteristics

The affective skills in teacher education should pay attention and look for ways to include feelings, attitudes and beliefs of teachers in the discussion of effective teachers’ competencies. This paper aims to reveal the perspectives of instructors about the teacher characteristics that prospective teachers will gain after taking the teacher education, and to uncover how these characteristics are related to the affective domain. Research Methods: A survey design was employed in this paper. Both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used to analyze the range of data collected. In the quantification of data from survey questionnaires, frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations provided some general patterns in the data. The qualitative data gathered by open ended questions were analyzed by content analysis. Findings: Results showed that there are numerous affective competencies that are essential for prospective teachers to develop such as having positive attitudes towards the teaching profession, developing empathy, sensitivity, love, self-esteem and self-concept are vital for prospective teachers. However, none of the teacher education programs fully addressed all the affective needs of prospective teachers. Implications for Research and Practice: It is expected that the findings of this paper help the instructors and education policy makers to identify effect of affective domain in teacher education programs.