Evaluation of professional skills of elementary school teachers

This research was conducted to evaluate professional skills of elementary school teachers in Tehran. We investigated the potential strengths and weaknesses of their teaching skills in order to propose appropriate solutions to reduce weaknesses and improve strengths of teaching skills.The influences of some factors such as gender, age, education level and field, teaching experience, physical conditions of classes, pre- service and in- service trainings and the region where they teach on their professional skills was also surveyed. Using stage sampling, 457 teachers were randomly selected among teachers population of Tehran in academic year 1384-85 out of 5 regions and 54 schools. The teacher's teaching skills were surveyed via questionnaires completed by 45 sample school principals.The teaching learning process of 45 teachers was also evaluated through 3 periods of observations of each teacher’s class.The results showed that:1- The instructional activities concentrated less on skill learning of students than knowledge and attitude components of learning process.2- The teacher’s instruction and teaching skills as a whole was relatively average, but they have serious difficulties in some important aspects of their instructions.