INVESTIGATING HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF ‘INSPIRING FOREIGN LANGUAGE TEACHER’

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to examine high school students' perceptions of the concept of inspiring foreign language teacher. Fifty-eight students studying at two different high schools within the Ministry of National Education in Nevşehir province participated in the study, which was designed with the phenomenological approach, one of the qualitative research methods. Data were collected using a semi-structured interview form and subjected to content analysis. In the coding done separately by the researchers, the agreement rate among the coders was calculated as 0.94. Research findings show that students mostly consider the concept of inspiring teacher in terms of teacher-student relations, followed by personal attributes, professional competencies and attitude towards the profession. Foreign language teachers, whom the participants consider inspiring, come to the fore firstly in terms of their professional competencies, then their personal attributes, teacher-student relations and attitudes towards the profession. The participants also stated that the foreign language teachers they consider inspiring had some impact on their language learning, personal and educational lives. The research findings were discussed in relation to the literature and suggestions were made to teacher educators, curriculum developers and researchers working on the subject.