Teacher qualifications for young learners: Through the eyes of private schools

Abstract

In Turkey, teaching English to young learners (TEYL) has been a major issue for private schools for a longer period than public schools. This indicates that the private sector's efforts to provide English language instruction for their students could provide invaluable information regarding the implementation of TEYL. Therefore, the current study aims to investigate private schools' hiring criteria in terms of teacher qualifications for young learners (YL). Both a questionnaire and in-depth personal interviews were used for data collection. 67 teachers and 8 head teachers from 10 different private schools participated in the study. The results revealed that language teachers for YL should be competent in many areas: pedagogy, methodology, language, interpersonal and personal qualities. However, the most highlighted qualifications are personal skills (e.g., being creative, appealing to children, energetic) and language competencies (e.g., fluency and phonological ability), which are considered to have an impact on the way children learn English.