Exploring student and teacher perceptions of the ideal teacher in Russia

To improve current teacher education and teacher evaluation practices it is important to collect and critically examine different perspectives on who the ideal teachers are. The present study explores and compares how the ideal teacher is conceptualised by students and their teachers. Data were collected from 53 high school students and 16 of their teachers in urban and rural schools in Russia using an exploratory mixed-method study. The results indicate that students saw teachers' ability to recognise students' individual differences but treat everyone equally as the two most important teacher qualities. Teachers, however, attributed the most value to professionalism and ability to follow ethical principles. In addition, rural teachers self-assessed their own teaching quality more favourably than urban teachers while both rural and urban students gave similar ratings to the quality of teaching provided by their teachers.