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WHAT DOES IT TAKE to be an effective early childhood teacher? This is a question that has long gnawed at reflective teacher educators, idealistic teachers (especially those just beginning their careers), and worried families who place their young children in the care of another adult. Many educators feel that effectiveness as a teacher stems from a combination of knowledge, skills, and personal characteristics (Katz 1993).
While aspiring teachers can increase their knowledge and develop their skills, their personal characteristics-which involve the socioemotional and spiritual realms in addition to the cognitive-are likely to be more fixed. As Cantor (1990) notes, one can have both knowledge and skills, but without a disposition to make use of them, very little will happen. Having is not the same as doing.
Because personal characteristics are rooted in feelings and beliefs, we can neither observe them directly nor assess them through traditional methods (Ostorga 2003), which makes them difficult to identify. Nevertheless, teacher educators and administrators would benefit greatly from knowing the characteristics of an effective early childhood teacher, as they strive to improve the quality of the field. New teachers and those at a crossroads in their career would also benefit if they could confirm that the interpersonal and intrapersonal beliefs they possess are those demanded by the field.
Reviewing the literature
With these goals in mind, this article summarizes an attempt to identify some of the key characteristics early childhood teachers need to excel in their job. This is by no means a novel idea. The literature cites numerous examples of positive teacher dispositions (Ebro 1977; Smith 1980; Glenn 2001; Usher 2003; Adams & Pierce 2004). These examples often include characteristics such as enthusiasm and a good attitude.
Although they serve a definite need, the existing examples have limitations. Characteristics, or dispositions, as they are sometimes called, are frequently used interchangeably with traits and skills in the literature, when in fact they are not the same. DaRosVoseles and Fowler-Hughey (2007) make the point that traits, unlike dispositions, are unconscious behavioral habits. Skills such as "being organized," "having command of the classroom," and "asking probing questions" are teacher abilities but not characteristics.
A second problem with the current literature on teacher characteristics is that most of the lists of characteristics...