Characteristics of a Good Teacher from the Point of View of Student and Teaching Staff in Zanjan University of Medical Sciences - 2004

Although educational conditions and facilities play an important role in learning process, human power, in particular the teacher is one of the key components of educational environment. The teacher is central to create ideal situations in order to achieve educational goals. The teacher can compensate for the subject matter and educational equipment deficiency and by contrast he/she might change an ideal teaching condition and subject into a passive and boring environment due to inability in establishing a favorable emotional rapport. Not only the skills and knowledge of the teacher but also his/her overall personality contributes to learning process and change. This cross – sectional study was carried out to determine the attitude of students and teaching staff towards a good teacher. The studied community included the whole teaching staff (144 people) and 50% of 850 students of university of medical sciences of zanjan who were selected through random sampling.Means of data collecting were two separate questionnaires which were filled out by studied individuals. The collected data were extracted through excel statistical software and analyzed by SPSS. The results showed that in educational regulations domain from the students’ viewpoints, the accessibility of the teacher and from the teachers’ viewpoints punctuality of the teacher were important while in scientific – educational domain from both students’ and teachers’ viewpoints mastery was important and in evaluation and monitoring domain from the students’ viewpoints responsibility to answer students’ questions and from the teachers’ viewpoints putting forward questions in each session and in behavior – ethics domain eloquence were the most important characteristics of a good teacher. We can conclude from the research findings that a good teacher is required to have skills in teaching style, behavior and ethics, assessment and evaluation as well as scientific expertise and the learner pays careful attention to those abilities.