The college students’ perspective on what makes an educator well-qualified

The educators of the 21st century have a great task ahead. In today’s world, the educators are expected to have a great deal of professional and personal qualities, and extraordinary skills. This descriptivecorrelational study aimed to determine perceptions of college students on a well-qualified educator. The study included 123 selected college students from different colleges in Central Luzon, Philippines using a convenience sampling technique. As data collection tool, a questionnaire prepared by the researcher team was used. Some of the findings of the study include: (1) the respondents answered agree on the context of professional and personal qualities that a teacher should have; (2) while in terms of the skills exhibited by an educator, it got an answer to Very Satisfactory. We also found significant differences in professional qualities, learning and innovation skills and life and career skills when grouped according to the respondent’s profile. There was low-to-moderate evidence of the relationship that existed between the qualities and skills of an educator. The results further confirmed the relationship through regression analysis and found that communication skills affect the qualities of an educator. Based on the results, we discussed and recommended practical suggestions on professional, personal and skills improvements of an educator.


Introduction
The educational system of the 21st century is at par different from the previous decades. In the current curriculum, chance always plays a vital role in adopting a newer and better set of teaching strategies and principles which will again put teachers into the test of tides in terms of their teaching attributes and skills. Teachers are more than just an educator. The characteristics that make a teacher worthy are complex and extensive (Bullock, 2015). In addition, Ilaltdinova, Frolova, and Lebedeva, (2017) rated the qualities of a successful teacher and allowed them to single out several qualities which teachers have and they named it as universal.
Education is a great motivator and a source of investment. Policymakers are revolutionizing teacher evaluation by attaching greater stakes to student test scores and observation-based teacher effectiveness measures, but they know little about why they often differ so much (Harris, Ingle, & Rutledge, 2014). But, the results will not decide the future of students, reality will hone their skills and merging with the society will also have a great impact on the holistic development of students.
Educating a population of diverse learners is one of the many tasks facing teacher educators, resulting in teachers questioning their capability to expand learning for these groups (Chu, 2011).
Over the past decades of teaching practice and innovation, academicians, administrators, and other important personalities used several ways to quantify some important strategies and methodologies in teaching. In the words of Gargani and Strong, (2014) instructor observations have become a national education occurrence, required by national policies and promoted by philanthropists. They are critical devices of teacher assessment systems that often have high risks for teachers and school systems but have sparked little improvement. A study also found out that rating mechanism, including disposition surveys, clinical practice observation, scores, and portfolio valuation each measure a single underlying element rather than the multiple paradigms it designed them to measure (Henry, Thompson, Campbell, Patriarca, Luterbach, Lys, & Covington, 2013).
From Dueñas, Klash, and Bowden (2019), professional educators have a collaborative mentality, enduring perseverance, a genuine love of learning and an uncompromising pride in the children. The associations of both positive and negative relationships (teacher-student) with a student's school engagement were medium to large, whereas associations with a students' school achievement were small to medium (Roorda, Koomen, Spilt, & Oort, 2011). They also found stronger effects in high grades and negative effects of relationships were stronger in primary than in secondary. Loeb, Soland, and Fox (2014) exposed that teachers effective with English learners also are effective with their non-English learners and vice versa. There was also evidence that some teachers are more effective with English learners than with non-English learners. The teacher's fluency in students' home language and whether he or she possesses a bilingual teaching certificate that increased the efficacy as predicted.
Emotions experienced by teachers while teaching are unexplored avenues of research (Coleman, 2014). Emotional distress was a central subject as the teacher considered the children's play in relation to the information gained in the graduate online course or vice versa (Madrid, Baldwin, & Frye, 2013). The findings of the study revealed the teacher's discomfort and the resulting struggle and ambivalence she encountered as new information about the children's social worlds disrupted her prior beliefs, values, and feelings.
On the other side of the discussion, Yuan and Hu, (2018) demonstrated the perceived qualities of an effective teacher educator as being "fountains of knowledge". Low, Hui and Cai (2017) also shed light on the importance of teacher educators modeling the pedagogical practices that they endeavor to impart in their pre-service classrooms. Baric and Burusic (2014) suggested that teachers with different professional status-related personal attributes are uniform in their views, expectations, and satisfaction. They found it interesting to note about the relationship between school-based Catholic religious education and the parish-based catechesis, where existing relationship represents a weak source of religious education teacher's satisfaction. For Amatea, Cholewa, and Mixon (2012), they investigated a course at a large research university in the Southeastern United States designed to influence the attitudes of pre-service teachers (PSTs) about how they might work with low-income and/or ethnic minority families and found out that their attitudes were less stereotypic; They were more confident about using family-centric involvement practices and conceptualized student's problems in less blaming terms.
Local authors also, share some important and revealing literature. Based on the study of Lavilles, Jr. (2017), there is a relationship between a teacher's soft skills and the school's performance which indicates that the higher the skills proficiency, it tends to improve the school performance. Magno and Sambrano (2016), they found that the teachers practicing learnercentered approaches use their self-efficacy to be effective in teaching but it was also found out that being effective does not result in high teaching performance ratings. On the other hand, Enanoza and Abao (2014) revealed that teachers carried out their roles excellently; likewise, there were significant interrelationships between and among the roles and the factors that affect them. The physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual factors directly affect the successful exercise of their roles. Espina (2013) described the ideal teacher as one primarily with the "ability to share relevant knowledge and experiences to clarify the concept." Also, as the most prevalent descriptor of the assessed teacher is "expertise in the subject matters taught". Likewise, the teachers were effective in instructional delivery and facilitating learning with a premium placed on humane treatment of learners. Last, De Guzman, Torres, Uy, Tancioco, Siy, and Hernandez (2008) identified clusters of teacher roles that show caring behavior that implies acts of teaching become acts of caring depending on how the teachers, the efficient cause of education, perform their ordinary tasks in extraordinariness. Interestingly, the students felt and experienced the caring behavior of the teacher and positively shaped their orientations as cared for individuals.
This study aimed to determining the qualities and skills of an educator in the perspective of selected college students from Central Luzon, Philippines. The paper hopes to provide essential information about an educator's qualities and skills in the fascinating world of the teaching career. Last, to add up to the research world some substantial data that would be very beneficial for future researchers who will endeavor in the same field with more enthusiasm and in-depth analysis.

Research Design
The researchers used a descriptive-correlational method in this study. According to Stangor and Walinga (2014), descriptive research is a design to provide a snapshot of the current state of affairs and correlational research is a design to discover relationships among variables and allow them to tell the future events from present knowledge.
Since the study concerns the qualities and skills of a teacher and its relationships, the descriptive-correlational design, therefore, is the most convenient method to use for this investigation.

Participants
A total of 123 respondents from different colleges in Central Luzon took part in the study (see Table 1). A convenience sampling technique was adopted to select participants. The data was collected during the academic year 2017-2018. As seen from the Table 1, there were more female than the male counterpart, and most of the respondents came from private schools. It is also seen that there are more respondents in the fourth-year level and the majority of them belong to the age bracket of 16-20 years old.

Instrument
The researchers made a draft questionnaire. It was first submitted for critiquing to different practitioners in education (an associate professor teaching general education subjects, a college administrator, a retired professor teaching professional education subjects, an associate professor teaching statistics, and a HR supervisor) . We considered their comments in revising and completing the questionnaire. The questionnaire also underwent reliability testing and the following results were: for the Professional Qualities comprised 15 items, α = 0.90, for the Personal Qualities comprised 15 items, α = 0.84 and for the Skills with 25 items, α = 0.94. All the results of the Cronbach's Alpha were reliable. It was also pilot tested to students who were not subject participants in the study.

Data Analysis
For the data analysis, the researchers made use of the Likert scale with the following ranges: 1.00-1.49=Strongly Disagree; 1.50-2.49=Disagree; 2.50-3.49=Agree; 3.50-4.00=Strongly Agree. Such classification was used to justify how the respondents feel about the items in the questionnaire, whether they are in agreement or disagreement.
For statistical treatment, we used regression analysis to predict the relationship between the qualities and skills of the educator. We used Pearson-r for the relationship between the qualities and skills of an educator. The ANOVA and t-test were used to see if there are significant differences in the means of the variables when they were grouped. We used the frequency count in the demographic's presentation data of the respondents, and weighted mean for the average perception of the respondents in the qualities and skills of an educator. SPSS 22 was used to analyse the data.

Results
The main purpose of this study was to analyze the college student's perception on what makes an educator well-qualified. In this context, firstly descriptive statistics are presented and then the results obtained from relational analyses are given. Table 2 exhibits the mean distribution of respondents on the professional qualities of an educator. Table 2.

Item
Mean Descriptive Rating 1) Has the mastery of the subject matter.
3.60 Strongly Agree 2) Is a model of best teaching practice.
3.49 Agree 3) Works with the stakeholders (parents, community, school, and teachers) in the school setting.
3.14 Agree 4) Instructs children in classrooms with the best teaching practice. 3.39 Agree 5) Has characters and skills to approach all aspects of his/ her work.
3.24 Agree 6) Views "learning" as a lifelong process for everyone.
3.26 Agree 7) Have the characters and skills for working towards improving his/ her teaching.
3.30 Agree 8) Have qualities and skills for working towards improving the school. 3.31 Agree 9) Has the knowledge to guide the science and art of his/ her teaching practice.
3.19 Agree 10) Perceives himself/ herself as someone who can affect change or learning.
3.32 Agree 11) Sees to it that teaching is a noble profession.
3.25 Agree 12) Should manifest genuine enthusiasm and pride in teaching.
3.35 Agree 13) Participates in the continuing professional learning education program.
3.33 Agree 14) Uses the teaching profession as a dignified means of earning a decent living.
3.25 Agree 15) Possesses a spirit of professional loyalty, mutual confidence, and faith in one another.

Agree
Overall Mean 3.32 Agree Likert Scale: 1.00-1.49=Strongly Disagree; 1.50-2.49=Disagree; 2.50-3.49=Agree; 3.50-4.00=Strongly Agree As can be seen in Table 3 shows the mean distribution of respondents on the personal qualities of an educator. We can understand it from the table that first item got the highest mean with 3.69 which has a corresponding descriptive rating of "Strongly Agree", while item-8 got the lowest with 2.98 which is equivalent to "Agree" in the descriptive rating scale. Overall, the mean was 3.36, and we interpret it as "Agree". Table 3 shows the mean distribution of respondents on the personal qualities of an educator. We can understand it from the table that item-1 got the highest mean with 3.69 which has a corresponding descriptive rating of "Strongly Agree", while item-8 got the lowest with 2.98 which is equivalent to "Agree" in the descriptive rating scale. Overall, the mean was 3.36, and we interpret it as "Agree". Table 3.

Mean Distribution of Respondents' Perception on the Personal Qualities of an Educator
Item Mean Descriptive Rating 1) Passionate for teaching and cares for their students.
3.69 Strongly Agree 2) Entertaining in relating with students which stimulate a friendly relationship.

Agree
3) Models of values and brings standards, code of ethics, and strong beliefs.
3.47 Agree 4) Open in promoting respect and trust between teachers and students.
3.45 Agree 5) Fair and impartial in treating students which eliminates discrimination.
3.39 Agree 6) Objective and unbiased in judging their work and performance. 3.46 Agree 7) Sincere to show their real self, without any dishonesties and halftruths.
3.36 Agree 8) Accepts mistakes and faults without cover-up. 2.98 Agree 9) Upright and exemplary in behavior to earn respect and high esteem from students and colleagues.
3.11 Agree 10) Patient with their students' limitations and difficulties. 3.17 Agree 11) Attends to difficult classroom situations with cool-headedness.
3.29 Agree 12) Full of energy and cheerfulness which will be felt by children.
3.20 Agree 13) Eager and excited, full of passion and love, which can be observed by children.
3.50 Strongly Agree 14) Committed to perform the duties and responsibilities mandated by the laws and code of ethics of the profession.
3.37 Agree 15) Able to perform all teaching and learning activities with consistency and selflessness to the best interest of the students.

Strongly Agree
Overall Mean 3.36 Agree Likert Scale: 1.00-1.49=Strongly Disagree; 1.50-2.49=Disagree; 2.50-3.49=Agree; 3.50-4.00=Strongly Agree Table 4 displays the mean distribution of respondents on the skills of an educator. We can examine in the section of Communication Skills, item-1 and item-2 got the highest and lowest means with 3.54 and 3.20 and they have a descriptive rating of Excellent and Very Satisfactory. While in the Learning and Innovation Skills, item-2 got the highest mean with 3.37 and item-4 got the lowest mean with 3.23, both have a descriptive rating of Very Satisfactory. In Information, Media, and Technology, item-1 got the highest mean and item-2 got the lowest with 3.29 and 2.80, both got the same descriptive rating of Very Satisfactory. Last, for Life and Career Skills, item-2 got the highest mean with 3.45 which was equivalent to Very Satisfactory in the descriptive rating scale and item-4 got the lowest mean with 3.11 which has the same result on the rating scale. The overall mean score for the skills of an educator was 3.25, interpreted as Very Satisfactory.  Table 5 shows the t-test for a significant difference in the professional and personal qualities of an educator when grouped according to gender. We can deduce from the table that there is a significant difference in the professional qualities of a teacher, since t (121) = -2.36, p < .05. However, on the personal qualities of an educator, there was no significant difference found since t (121) = -1.52 and p > .05. To sum it up, the male and female respondents have different perspectives with the professional qualities of an educator. In terms of personal qualities, both genders have the same perspectives.  Table 6 shows the t-test for a significant difference in the professional and personal qualities of an educator when grouped according to the school. We can deduce that there is a significant finding in the professional qualities of an educator since, t (121) = -2.24, p < .05. However, there is no significant finding in personal qualities since, t (121) = -0.95, p > .05. To summarize, they see the professional qualities when the respondents came from a public or private school from a different viewpoint. In terms of personal qualities, both types of schools have the same perspective.  Table 7 shows the t-test for a significant difference in the skills of an educator when grouped according to the school. There was a significant difference found in the section of Learning and Innovation Skills with t (121) = -2.71, p < .05 and Life and Career Skills t (121) = -3.16, p < .05. Communication Skills got a t (121) = -1.43, p > .05 and Information, Media and Technology Skills got a t (121) = -1.70 with p > .05. Both scores did not yield sufficient results to be significant. Overall, Learning and Innovation Skills, together with Life and Career Skills provided a different perspective among the respondents of the study and they are influenced by the school where they came from.  Table 8 shows the ANOVA for a significant difference in the skills of a teacher when grouped according to the year level. We can see it from the table that Learning and Innovation Skills and Life and Career Skills got significant results since F (3,119) = 6.06, p< .05 and F (3,119) = 4.82, p< .05. However, there were no significant findings from Communication Skills and Information, Media, and Technology Skills since F (3,119) = 2.65, p> .05 and F (3,119) = 1.55, p> .05. To generalize, Learning and Innovation Skills and Life and Career Skills provided a different viewpoint among the respondents depending on the year level that they belong to. Table 9 shows the analysis of variance for a significant difference in the professional and personal qualities of an educator when grouped according to age. We can deduce that there is a significant difference in the professional qualities, since F (4,118) = 3.22, p< .05. However, personal qualities got no significant difference, since F (4,118) = 0.85, p> .05. To simplify, the professional qualities made a significant difference among the respondents in terms of age; thus, maturity comes into perspective. However, age is not a factor for the personal qualities of an educator.  Table 10 points out the ANOVA of a significant difference in the skills of an educator when grouped according to age. We can analyze it that only Life and Career Skills got a significant finding since F (4,118) = 2.48, p< .05. However, the rest of the Skills got no significant outcomes and got the following values: Communication Skills, F (4,118) = 1.01, p> .05; Learning and Innovations Skills, F (4,118) = 1.77, p> .05; and Information, Media, and Technology Skills, F (4,118) = 0.98, p> .05.  Table 11 exhibits the results of the correlation analysis. We can deduce that the four criteria of the skills of an educator correlated to the professional and personal qualities. The coefficients of 0.53, 0.49, 0.37, and 0.47 for the professional qualities and 0.58, 0.43, 0.36, and 0.46 for the personal qualities showed this. The findings show that the higher the skills of an educator, the higher the professional and personal qualities, the lower the Skills of a teacher, the lower the professional and personal qualities. Table 11. Correlation Matrix on the Perceived Qualities and Skills of an Educator *p<.05 Table 12 displays the result of the regression line analysis and we can claim that Communication Skills yielded with the B coefficient lower than the significance level set at 0.05. This means that Communication Skills is a significant factor for the qualities of an educator.
The other factors also correlated but not to a significant extent. This means that the factors, Information, Media, and Technology Skills and Life and Career Skills also account for the professional and personal qualities of an educator.

Discussion and Conclusion
Being an educator is a great task that needs special attention. We educate the young minds of the future. From the first table, it showed the different professional qualities that an educator should have. The respondents of the study agree to all of the items that were included. This only implies that they have already experienced or observed such traits from an educator since the early years of schooling. According to Magno and Sembrano (2017), they stipulated in their study that being effective does not result in high teaching performance ratings. This result may coincide so of the study. In addition, Low, Hui, and Cai (2017) emphasized the importance of teacher educators as role models who embody the values that they would like to cultivate. Further, Tunca, Sahin, Oguz, and Guner (2015), listed five main themes regarding the qualities that an ideal teacher educator should have and some of the themes were mentioned in the table. For the second table, it enumerated the different personal qualities of an educator, and as expected, the majority of the responses were agreeable. However, based on the result of the study of Harris, Ingle, and Rutledge (2014), they suggested that the method of evaluation may not only affect which specific teachers are rewarded in the short term, but shape the qualities of a teacher and teaching students  (2019), educators all around the world face similar challenges because of the very nature of the educational environment. It is also important to take into consideration the skills that an educator should possess. This can make the class more interested and motivated because of the multiple talents that an educator has. The third table makes up the four major skills that an educator should have. The respondents generously responded with satisfaction. Meaning to say, they might have seen them. This result is supported by the study of Espina (2013) where he related that teachers were seen to be effective in instructional delivery and facilitating learning with a premium placed on humane treatment of learners. According to Svavarsdottir, Sigurdardottir and Steinsbekk (2016), the capability of building trust and tailoring education to the individual is the most prominent characteristics of a good educator. However, De Moraes (2019) stated that educators teach their classes independently from their colleagues, which can make them feel isolated to some extent.
To realize the extent of the qualities and skills of an educator, the opinion of the group is necessary to test the differences in such perspective. The test for significant differences for the professional and personal qualities of an educator yielded some interesting results. In terms of gender, the female counterpart yielded a substantial result in the professional qualities' perspective. This agrees with the study of Alhija (2017), wherein there is a salient difference in the students' perception of good teaching in terms of the gender of which the current study has also observed. The same idea was provided by Yolcu and Sari (2018), women teachers had higher scores regarding both importance level and self-efficacy perception of character education. The private school students also provided a significant finding in professional qualities. In a study by Baric and Burusic (2014), they revealed an interesting finding between the relationship of schoolbased Catholic religious education and parish-based catechesis, where it represents a weak source of religious education and teaching satisfaction. Although it has no direct relationship with the result of the study, it has an indirect proof that the type of school can influence the result of the study at hand. The same result was observed in terms of the skills of the educators and the private school respondents generated a substantial outcome in terms of learning and innovative skills and the life and career skills of the educators. According to Magno and Sembrano (2017), teachers practicing learner-centered approaches use their self-efficacy in order to be effective in teaching, but being effective does not result in high teaching performance ratings. However, this idea is in contrast with the current study.
As the study digs deeper into other important perspectives of the professional and personal qualities and skills of an educator, it showed some remarkable results also. In terms of educator's learning and innovation skills and life and career skills, the two items provided an essential result when they are grouped according to year levels. Onwuegbuzie et al. (2007) analyzed that with respect to the level of students, graduate students revealed a statistically significant result compared to other types of students in their study. The result of the study is indirectly related to the current study's results since it tackled a higher level of respondents in graduate school. In terms of age, professional qualities of an educator yielded a significant outcome. In relation, Enanoza, and Abao (2014) stated that a teacher's physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being greatly affects the performance and exercise of his/ her roles which indirectly supports the results of this study. The same realization was done in terms of life and career skills of an educator and the results have some connection with the study of Gu and Day (2013) when they stated that the experience of resilience amongst teacher was perceived as being closely allied to their everyday capacity to sustain their educational purposes and successfully manage the unavoidable uncertainties which are inherent in the practice of being a teacher.
For the possibility of correlations among the variables, the study was able to show a positive low-to-moderate relationship between the skills and the qualities of an educator. Since there is a relationship between the two it simply shows that in terms of skills of an educator, it has substantial effect on the professional and personal qualities. This result is somewhat related to the findings of Soine and Lumpe (2014) wherein there was a slight, but significant, correlation between Active Learning in Classroom and teachers' use of new knowledge and skills, as measured by classroom observation scores. In addition, O'Dwyer and Atli (2014) attested the complexities of the in-service educator's role and revealed a more than simply effective teacher.
The relationship of between the skills and qualities was further explained by the regression analysis and confirmed that communication skills has a significant impact on the qualities of the educator. The result is in agreement with Curwood's (2014) study which indicated that teachers use language and other semiotic resources to express their own identity as well as to acknowledge, expand on, and counter others' identity claims. On the other hand, Ilaltdinova, Frolova and Lebedeva (2017) considered empathy as a universal quality that a good teacher should have.

Limitations
There are several limitations in this study. First, sample size, respondents were still not that large enough to generate a more substantial report. Second, the availability of the respondents, some are working students and some were reluctant to take part in the study. Third, conflict of interest, some respondents is too general or too specific in answering the survey. Fourth, time constraints, the researchers had limited time in collecting data since they are also teaching full time. And last, budgetary allotment, we carried this study out for academic discussion. The researchers tried their best to produce a substantial result for this study to attain a significant implication for the field of education.

Recommendations
Based on the results of the research conducted and the conclusions made through the gathered data, it is recommended that: a. Instructors, teachers or faculty should also exhibit visibility and cooperation with the other stakeholders. b. School administrators must also start and take part in the community extension programs which will provide exposure for the school staff the teachers. c. Annual mental or psychological check-up for instructors, teachers or faculty and necessary stress debriefing after year-end teaching. d. Equip the instructors, teachers or faculty with the information media, and technology through workshops and training to keep up with the pace of the generation. e. Provide teachers, instructors or faculty options to improve their status of living, opportunities for a better life, and accommodations after retirement. f. Continuous updates and upgrades in the professional and personal skills and personality development of teachers. g. Conduct related or future researches of this type of study.