“Temperament in Teaching: Diffusing Power”

From some researchers’ viewpoints, teacher’s temperament and personality are among the most significant qualities of a successful teacher. The understanding of others’ opinions, behavior and needs, helps to respond adequately to each other. This understanding doesn’t provide us with the standards that give detailed instructions to behave properly; but, it develops our awareness, and broadens our knowledge about our colleagues or our students’ dominant temperament to how identify, understand, and deal with them. I think the key point that every teacher has to be careful about is that the distinction of students’ temperament types must help him/her to reach the effective and successful teaching that doesn’t consist in dominating students or controlling them. What makes a teacher powerful is a safe and secure learning environment where students’ personal and intellectual development is considered as a primary role of the teacher. Students’ active contribution to the class activities, based on cooperative learning, balance power in the classroom. This way, by sharing the responsibility of teaching/learning between the students and the teacher and assigning a part of the responsibility of their growth to the students, we can share the power in the class.