Transformations, taking place in all the spheres of Russian Society, have raised a problem of improving and developing education. Interaction of subjects in educational process in the university plays a very important role in solving this problem, as well as competence of a teacher, affecting both educational process and its final result – the quality of education. This paper describes the problems in formation of interaction between students and teachers and charts the ways of improvement of the effectiveness of educational process.
Formation of a certain image of a teacher in student’s consciousness plays a great role in solving the problem in question. The image of a teacher actively influences different aspects of interaction, and cooperation with students. The effectiveness of educational process depends on the competence of the teacher and the way students percept him. A number of researchers (P.G. Belkin, A.I. Vyrazhenskaya, P.V. Kartsev, S.V. Kondratjeva, N.V. Kuzmina etc.) point out, that in many cases social and perceptive processes are dominating in forming the interaction between the students and teachers both in educational and scientific spheres.
The analysis of literature concerning the problem of forming the image of a teacher in student’s consciousness showed that this problem is insufficiently developed. In particular, some aspects remain unresolved – mechanisms of intergroup and interpersonal perception in communication, decisive effect of first impression which defines further cooperation, the role of appearance, the concepts (or stereotypes) of an ideal teacher etc.
It should be pointed out, that stereotyping plays a very important role in forming the first impression about a person. The way the students percept the teacher when they meet him first time is often based on a small quantity of information, and is under the strong influence of previous notions, attitudes, and experience the students have had. It’s clear that in this situation, with a shortage of information about the personal qualities of a teacher, the student correlates the teacher’s image to the classification of personalities based on his own daily interpersonal interaction. In such a situation there may be discrepancies between the real «psychological portrait» of a certain teacher and the image that a student formed in his consciousness, moreover, the subjective perception of individual characteristics of a teacher is filled in every situation differently. The more the partners are interested in communication, the less neutral their situation is. In such a case perceptual errors and mistakes concerning the choice of techniques of further interaction occur more often. In cases when students meet the teacher, whose subject does not have any test control in the near future, they «draw» his «psychological portrait» more or less precisely. If there is a credit in an easy subject (form the point of view of the students), perceptual errors, as a rule, increase. And if there is an examination, a teacher is related to the category of «sadists», «torturers», «kind simpletons», or «strict but fair».
The basic role in case of «hallo effect» belongs to a perceptual error called superiority factor, as a priori the teacher is educated better, he is frequently ascribed competence in scientific, personal and other issues, which are sometimes far beyond teaching.
Attractiveness factor is also a part of forming a first impression: attractive physical appearance, voice, manners of a teacher is perceived as more intelligent, interesting and fair, and the other way round. However, individual perception of each student, on the one hand, is stereotyped, which allows to form «public opinion» about the teacher, and on the other hand, it is personal and unique, therefore, with more or less proportion of comfort, creates peculiar percept-image.
To achieve success, a teacher must have certain professional knowledge skills and abilities:
- To be a man of great erudition.
- To know the subject well.
- To be able to select educational material independently.
- To select optional and effective means and methods of teaching.
- To be able to create motivation.
- To be severe on the knowledge of the students.
- To be logical and have a copious vocabulary.
- To be good at reflection.
- To be a man of quick observation and to be able to understand students.
It should be noted that educational knowledge and skills considerably improve the efficiency of teaching profession. Being an intelligent person is one of the most frequently mentioned characteristics among the students when they evaluate the teacher they respect. When the teacher expresses his thoughts with ambiguity, it leads to ambiguity of his speech, and consequently, to misunderstanding with students.
The attitude towards criticism is also important. A teacher must give a student an opportunity to express his opinion, even in brief. The best moment for doing it is a seminar or a break. A scientific dispute in comparison with the dispute of know-nothing people must be based only on logical arguments and certain facts.
Personal attitude must not interfere with impartial assessment, it is very important. Some students, especially women students, sometimes try to influence the teacher by scent.
None of the forms of in-class learning, including lectures, deprives the teacher of the opportunity to show his attitude to the students. Then the third factor, one of the strongest, which influences «the first impression image», can take place – the factor of personal attitude to us. As a rule, we positively judge people who are well disposed towards us, then those, who do not demonstrate it. And we often criticize those who dislike us. The factor of the attitude to us, which initializes the corresponding pattern of perception, is often conditioned by agreement or disagreement of a partner with our point of view.
Speaking about the factors forming the first impression, one can’t help mentioning such aspect of information about the person as clothing, because public attitudes compel us to «read» different personal traits via certain combinations of style, colour and even the quality of dress material (M.I. Kiloshenko etc.). A suit, according to the research of N.L. Shlykova, takes only the fourth position (after speech, gestures and face) in influencing the perception of the teacher by the students, nevertheless, it is also significant when forming the image of a teacher.
Thus, we can come to the conclusion that the perception of the teacher by the students during the first contact is based on the mechanisms of intergroup communication, where social stereotyping plays important role. As for further interaction, mechanisms of interpersonal communication are advanced to the forefront; these are identification, empathy and reflection. Studying the role of these phenomena in «teacher-students» interaction was beyond the scope of this research, as a high level of empathy and reflection development is an axiom of a teacher’s success. Besides, during the conversations with teachers we often heard that students give more sympathies to those teachers, who «look like them» (for example, they have similar outlooks on life, sometimes use youth lexis).
All the educational process, as well as education depends on the means of pedagogical impact applied by the teacher. Speech is the main means of pedagogical impact. A university teacher must have a high level of linguistic culture, a copious vocabulary, expressiveness, intonational patterns and enunciate correctly.
The profession of a teacher is the most widespread in the sphere of skilled labour: there are more than 3 million teachers in Russia, half of them are school teachers. Almost 20 % of Russians with higher education have pedagogical education, with two thirds of women among them.
Pedagogical community is constantly growing and developing. In the second half of the 20th century the amount of teachers on the planet more than doubled. It is also known that only the two thirds of specialists coming work at school, stay there for a long time. It can be accounted for the fact that despite its obvious mass character, this profession makes high demands on its representatives.
Peculiarity of psychology (the ability to percept and digest first of all emotionally coloured information) requires constant expressiveness of the teacher, it sufficiently increases physical and mental work load. It is not by chance that the profession of a teacher, along with flight dispatchers, firemen, and rescuers is in risk group due to the factor of emotional work load.
A teacher in students’ group is to some extent both a director and an actor, because each class is a kind of a performance. Besides, a teacher must be a leader who controls the group of students, which means he must also be a manager. (it should be pointed out that in the West that «managing a group of students» is a compulsory characteristic for a teacher and is one of the parameters of evaluating his work).
Finally, a teacher must be competent in his subject area. Only in this case he will be able to concentrate on the contents and its «arrangement», on organizing the students’ activities.
A teacher is example to follow, in accordance with the pattern of his behavior they subconsciously build up their own behavior. There is a notion of «significant other» in the national science. This is a person who is example to follow, whose values we accept. From the very beginning of a students’ life a teacher is the person, who is most significant for students. Therefore the morale of a teacher must correspond to the demands he makes to the students. While forming the students’ moral guides, the teacher turns them upon honesty, kindness, justice; at the same time the teacher is confronted with life outside the educational institution, and sometimes even inside it. In such conditions the most effective method of persuading students and neutralizing negative examples is value system of the teacher. Both now and always teachers were allotted a difficult task to «protect» and «recover» students from soullessness, falseness and double standards. But only the teacher who sincerely likes and respects the personality of a student (implicitly admitting his rights and dignity) can do it successfully.
The work is submitted to the International Scientific Conference «Modern sociology and education», London, October, 2013, 19-26, came to the editorial office оn 22.10.2013.