Characteristics of a Good Elementary School Teacher Analysis of Teachers' Self Perceptions.
Views on the desirable characteristics of teachers and their professional development directly affect the organisation of the initial and continuing professional training of teachers, which in turn largely determines the development of teachers' professional identity. In recent literature, professional identity is enmeshed in a broader societal discourse that is underpinned by values, personal qualities, ideology, relationships, status, training and qualifications. Starting from the point of view that the competences acquired are not sufficient for the teachers' professional activities, and also for reflection on their professional mission and identity and self examination of their own experiences, beliefs, values and practices, we were interested in how the most important characteristics of quality teachers are viewed by the teachers themselves in two neighbouring countries Croatia and Slovenia. We expected the results to be very similar due to the similarity of the cultural contexts of both countries. However, as the formation of professional identity depends not only on the broader social context, but also on the specific academic and institutional contexts in which teachers operate and develop, we also expected the answers to differ somewhat, which was confirmed by the results. Croatian teachers identified knowledge, creativity and fairness as the three most important characteristics of a good teacher, while the Slovene teachers identified the teacher's consistency as the most important feature of a good teacher, followed by knowledge and empathy. There was no statistically significant difference in the first three most important characteristics among teachers with regard to the length of their teaching experience and their age.