Abstract:

This study was conducted to determine the inadequate professional qualifications of advisor teachers. Employing a qualitative approach, we studied the question “what are your observations regarding the professional qualifications of the advisor teachers during the teaching practicum?” with senior students in various programs such as Turkish, English, mathematics, painting, music and primary school teaching at the Faculty of Education of a small-scale state university in central Turkey. Analyzing the observations of the prospective teachers, we identified seven aspects of inadequate qualifications: (1) professionalism, (2) classroom management, (3) communication, (4) professional development, (5) personality, (6) creating a democratic classroom environment, and (7) usage of instructional material and technology. In terms of professionalism, the analysis yielded that some of the inadequate qualifications are favoring some students over to others and not having the ability to solve problems. With regard to classroom management, the most frequent inadequate qualifications are not taking individual differences into consideration and not being able to ensure student participation to lectures. Regarding communication, lack of communication among educational shareholders and negatively criticizing students are mostly mentioned by student teachers. Based on the findings of the study, we suggest that educational authorities provide in-service training sessions to teachers to work on these problems so that the quality of instruction would increase in schools.

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