Effective Teaching Characteristics in Vocational Education.

Abstract

This study explored the students’ and instructors’ perception of effective teaching characteristics as well as investigating the distinction between them as perceived by 137 students and six instructors in a Community College in Southeastern United States. Convenience sampling method was used to select the population and sample of the study. Using the Teacher Behavior Checklist (TBC), students and instructors in vocational education were asked to rate the 28 teacher qualities that they considered effective teaching. Descriptive statistics (frequency, percentage and mean score), were used to explain the respondent preferences. In order to study the existence of any difference perception between both groups, a one-way MANOVA analysis of inferential statistics was used at .05 level of significant. An analysis of the results revealed students prefer their instructor to be confident, accessible, realistic and fair in testing and grading, knowledgeable about subject matter, good at listening, humble, punctual and manage class time. Instructors believe in order to be an effective teacher, these characteristics are more important; accessible, confident, creative and interesting, effective communicator, flexible/open minded, good listener, punctual and manage class time. Overall, both groups place a greater emphasize on instructional competency than personality/ interpersonal factors. The analysis of data found no statistical significant difference between students’ and instructors’ perception on effective teaching characteristics, both have strong agreement on seven out of 28 most effective characteristic: accessible, confident, good at listening, punctual and manage class time, strives to be a better teacher and technology competent. Both students and instructors have agreement on happy/ positive attitude/ humorous as a relatively least important characteristic. In conclusion, this exploratory study highlights the importance of instructors’ teaching competencies as effective characteristics in teaching in a vocational education setting.