International Journal of Physical and Social Sciences

The Teacher is considered a central figure in any classroom-learning environment especially in Indian school settings where the teacher controls the teaching learning process and directs the activities of students on a day-to-day basis. The interaction that teachers have with their students determines the nature of their interpersonal relationships and enables the teacher to improve their teaching practices. Most teachers would believe that good interactions with the students they teach are important. But are the students’ perceptions of the interactions that take place in the classroom the same as their teachers perceive it to be? The purpose of this study was to assess the teacher educators’ interpersonal behaviour in Teacher Education classroom in Jammu city. The Questionnaire on Teacher Interaction (QTI) was used as a tool to assess the teacher-student interactions in Teacher Education classroom. A sample of 250 students including both male and female teacher trainees was collected from five colleges of education in Jammu city. Statistical analyses including internal consistency reliability, scale validity ANOVA etc. was used. The descriptive statistics like Mean, Standard deviation, correlation, regression and t-test was used. The study describes how teacher trainees perceive the interpersonal behaviour of their teacher educators. Data analysis reveals that usually the teacher trainees see their teacher educator as good leaders. They also rated their teachers in terms of exhibiting helpful and friendly nature, understanding and giving students freedom and responsibility in the classroom. In fact, the teachers quite often in the classroom have exhibited the positive factors. Teacher trainees perceive their teacher educators to be strict which is quiet acceptable in the Indian classroom situation as a teacher is in command of a class most of the time. The negative aspects of the teacher interpersonal behaviour as assessed using QTI have been rated quite low by the students as teacher educators hardly show evidence of admonishing behaviour are less dissatisfied and less uncertain in their behaviour. Results on investigation of gender differences suggest that out of the eight scales of the QTI only one scales i.e. Student Responsibility/Freedom is statistically significant. Such results show that the overall objective of the study has been achieved in order to assess the teacher educators interpersonal behaviour in different colleges of Education located in Jammu city, India. The implications for teachers are outlined in this study suggest that if teacher want to improve their interaction with the students and their classroom-learning environment, they should ensure those behaviours that have been found to be empirically related with the variables in the QTI instrument in order to create a healthy learning environment which promotes learning and improves teacher-student relationship, ultimately affecting the overall quality of the teaching – learning process.