This study focused with the development and psychometric properties of a scale that measures teacher effectiveness in higher education. Extant literature on effective teachers served as bases for the construction of a 107-item initial scale administered to 497 higher education students chosen via systematic random sampling. Results of the study showed that there were four dimensions of teacher effectiveness in higher education. These dimensions identified in the scale posses the psychometric properties of validity and internal consistency. The validity was evaluated using factor analysis with items having factor loadings of .500 and above retained. On the other hand, the internal consistency estimate of the sub-scales using Cronbach coefficient α ranged from .707 to .968 while the overall internal consistency estimate of the scale was .972. Thus, the resulting Teacher Effectiveness Scale in Higher Education (TESHE) is a psychometrically sound scale that measures the multidimensional aspects of teacher effectiveness in higher education.

This study replicated another research project to find out what factors underlie the Characteristics of Effective English Language Teachers (CEELT) when a large and more representative and homogeneous sample is selected. The CEELT questionnaire compiled by Moafian and Pishghadam (2008) was administered to 1469 Iranian learners of English as a foreign language at various private and public schools in Mashhad, Iran to test three hypotheses addressing the strength of relationship among the characteristics, the number of extracted factors and their cross loadings. The 47 characteristics revealed high correlations among themselves and loaded as well as cross loaded on only five rotated factors when the Principal Axis Factoring was applied to the participants’ responses, i.e., rapport, fairness, qualification, facilitation and examination. The results have several research implications. First, reporting correlation coefficients and the KMO statistic of sampling adequacy is necessary. Secondly, samples consisting of at least 1000 participants should be selected, preferably with a ratio of 30 cases for each item. And finally, cross loading variable must be reported because these cross loadings necessitate adopting a holistic view towards teaching languages and establishing significant relationships between teacher characteristics and learner abilities such as language achievement and proficiency.

Turkish language teaching centers for foreigners have been founded in many universities in Turkey. However, there are hardly any scale development studies in the relevant literature to identify the attitudes of language teachers towards students in the teaching environment. This study was carried out in order to fill the void in the field. The study group of the study consisted of 184 instructors teaching Turkish to foreigners at the Ulutömer language school of Uludağ University in Bursa as well as at other state, foundation and private universities in Turkey. In order to test the construct validity of the scale, firstly a model was created with the sample group by means of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA), and it was decided whether the structure of the scale would be confirmed by using the Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). As a result of the analysis done, RMSEA turned out to be = 0.085, NFI = 0.93, NNFI = 0.91, SRMR = 0.08 and CFI = 0.95. According to the results of the exploratory factor analysis, a 3-factor scale, body language, motivation and class participation, consisting of a total of 57 items with factor load values of .30 and above, was obtained and the total variance explanation rate was calculated as 42,094%. Cronbach's Alpha analysis was used to determine the internal consistency of the scale and since this value approaching 1 meant an increase in reliability, it was found that the overall reliability level of the scale was 0.932. The SPSS 24.0 program was used for statistical analysis.

This study reports on the perceptions of a group of Turkish English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students on the attributes of effective language teachers. Data for this study were collected from 140 preparatory year EFL undergraduate students at Western Languages and Literature Department at Karadeniz Technical University. The students were given a questionnaire which included five categories of attributes that define effective language teachers: Rapport, Delivery, Fairness, Knowledge and Credibility, and Organization and Preparation. The results showed that the students placed the highest importance on Knowledge and Credibility attribute which included a good knowledge of English and being qualified for English teaching. They also rated highly rapport attributes such as care, friendliness, and patience and delivery attributes such as providing clear explanations and good examples. Fairness and lesson preparation were also considered important attributes. This research has implicati...

Research on the qualities of successful teachers in Turkey indicates that students consider teacher effectiveness as the ability to ensure an environment in which positive student-teacher interaction can take place. However, further studies are needed to clarify students’ perceptions of the qualities of effective foreign language teachers, in particular, thus providing educators with necessary information concerning the implementation of language teacher development programs. Therefore, 998 undergraduate students at a state university in Turkey were asked to complete a survey concerning the qualities they believed are characteristic of a successful English language teacher. The results provide a detailed profile of university English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ perceptions with respect to pedagogy-specific knowledge, personality traits, professional skills and classroom behavior.

Research on the qualities of successful teachers in Turkey indicates that students consider teacher effectiveness as the ability to ensure an environment in which positive student-teacher interaction can take place. However, further studies are needed to clarify students’ perceptions of the qualities of effective foreign language teachers, in particular, thus providing educators with necessary information concerning the implementation of language teacher development programs. Therefore, 998 undergraduate students at a state university in Turkey were asked to complete a survey concerning the qualities they believed are characteristic of a successful English language teacher. The results provide a detailed profile of university English as a foreign language (EFL) students’ perceptions with respect to pedagogy-specific knowledge, personality traits, professional skills and classroom behavior.

Keywords The aim of this research is to adapt the Approaches to Teaching Inventory into Turkish culture and analyze the teaching approaches of academics working at education faculties in terms of various variables. In the light of this aim, two subsequent sub studies were conducted. In the first phase of the study, the Approaches to Teaching Inventory (ATI) was adapted to Turkish culture. During the adaptation phase, language equivalence was analyzed both through interviews conducted with foreign language experts and through the correlation scores between the original and the Turkish forms. Results of the confirmatory factor analysis which was conducted on data gathered from 140 academics working at 35 different education faculties in Turkey confirmed the two-factor model of ATI as student centered and teacher centered. Reliability studies of ATI were carried out through Cronbach α, and McDonald ω coefficients and results revealed that ATI has the appropriate psychometric properties to be used in Turkish studies. In the second phase of the study, 185 academics working at 31 different education faculties were reached and their teaching approaches were analyzed based on the level of the course, number of students in their classes, their academic titles, and seniority variables. As a result of the analysis, it was found that academics adopted a more teacher-focused approach to teaching at undergraduate level courses whereas they adopted a more student-focused approach to teaching at graduate level courses. It was also found in terms of class size that academics adopted a more teacher-focused approach to teaching when the class size exceeded 20 students. In addition, in terms of academic titles, associate professors adopted a more student focused teaching approach compared to lecturer doctors and research assistant doctors. Moreover, a negative and weak relationship was found between seniority and teacher focused approach to teaching.

The purpose of the present study is to determine the extent to which teachers teaching Turkish as a foreign language think that they are professionally competent. For this purpose, first the qualifications expected from these teachers were investigated and as a result of the literature review, these qualifications were grouped under three headings (knowledge, application, development). The statements put under these headings were turned into questionnaire items by the researcher after which the questionnaire was administered to the participants. The findings of the study show that high majority of the teachers think that they are highly competent. Moreover, it was found that the departments graduated from do not have significant impacts on their perception of self-efficacy. However, work leads to significant difference in the perception.

The study explored whether a comprehensive and valid scale could be designed to measure English as a foreign language (EFL) teachers’ attributes. To this end, the literature was reviewed and a fairly large number of teacher evaluation forms were consulted to create a pool of 147 indicators. The removal of redundant and inappropriate indicators as well as accommodating suggestions made by education authorities resulted in the development of a 102-item English Language Teachers’ Attribute Scale (ELTAS). The administration of the scale to 1328 female grade three high school students in Mashhad, Iran, and applying the Principal Axis Factoring to the data and rotating the extracted latent variables (LVs) via Varimax with Kaiser Normalization showed that it contains eight factors, i.e., Qualified, Social, Stimulating, Organized, Proficient, Humanistic, Self-Confident, and Lenient. Statistical analyses indicated that not only the ELTAS itself but also its underlying factors were reliable. The highest correlations obtained between the LVs show that Qualified EFL teachers are Stimulating, Organized and Proficient while Social EFL teachers are Humanistic and Lenient. The results also show that EFL achievement correlates the highest with Lenient LV. The findings are discussed and suggestions are made for future research.