What Does It Mean to Be a Good Teacher? Beliefs of Future Secondary School Teachers During Their Initial Training in Spain

Teachers play a key role in students’ learning, especially when it comes to students who have more difficulties in the classroom. Initial teacher training contributes to achieving more competent teachers who are capable of successfully facing the start of their teaching profession, and students’ beliefs about what it means to be a good teacher are key. The prior beliefs and ideas with which future teachers come to university classrooms determine their first teaching identity and the beginning of their professional practice. In this paper, research focused on the beliefs of future secondary school teachers regarding what they consider constitutes a good teacher. A qualitative, biographical-descriptive methodology was used, in which the teaching students' narratives were used as a starting point to establish what characterizes a good teacher. The results show that future secondary school teachers place the relationship between the teacher and the students as the key factor when it comes to being a good teacher, above any other factor, which includes aspects related to the way in which the curriculum is taught.