Abstract:

Teaching is often considered a difficult job “that seems easy” (Labaree, 2000). Theory of education, educational psychology and other sciences have explored factors such as teaching methods used by successful teachers, the effects of teachers’ backgrounds or teachers’ personal characteristics and behaviours (enthusiasm, empathy, communication skills, etc.).

Different approaches have been used: deduction - when scientists described an ideal teacher, induction - when students evaluated their teachers, or when psychological tests backed the illustration of real personal qualities of teachers. Sometimes, a combination of both approaches seemed appropriate.

There is no doubt students like to attend some teachers´ classes more than the other´s. There are some reasons make teachers attract students – one of many traits which have appeared in pedagogical texts is called teacher charisma. However there are some limits in constructing instruments which would measure this multifactorial quality.

To shed more light on the concept of charisma, we conducted two pilot studies using the translation of a Taiwanese scale measuring teacher charisma within 2 groups of undergraduates of a European Technical University (2017, 2018). Descriptive Statistics of the factors in the ITCCC questionnaire (English and local version) were confronted. Results found by our preliminary studies suggest possible use of the questionnaire for assessment of students´perceptions of the quality of a teacher´s teaching in professional subjects (accounting in the Taiwanese survey and psychology in our studies). There are similarities in the statistics obtained in the Taiwanese and European groups of respondents (similar results in Cronbach α, mean and SD).

Nevertheless more surveys in larger groups of respondents are desirable, including more sophisticated statistical analysis. Such research would provide useful evidence to support usage of this inventory in different languages, surroundings and courses.

Keywords:

Teacher charisma, measure, diagnostics, questionnaire, comparing results of two studies.