Image of a University Professor: Students’ Views and Priorities

Abstract

In the light of transformations, which happen in the contemporary society in general and in the higher education sphere in particular, the practical and theoretical significance of the problem of University professor image making is growing. The purpose of this paper is to find out what today’s students think about their professors, which parts of their images students find the most important and prioritized. To this end, an experimental research of student’s opinions about university professor’s image was carried out. This paper provides the analysis of its results. The method of research consisted of oral and written interviews, as well as interviews in social networks. The analysis resulted in considering key features of the image of a contemporary university professor and in giving recommendations on the technology of positive image making. The paper shows that the dominant features of the image are professors’ professionalism and expertise in a specific subject area, their pedagogical competence as an ability to implement productive educational process and an emotional intelligence. The paper contains many practical examples which show the legitimacy of students’ priorities in part of image features of their professors.

Keywords

• image
• imageology
• university professor’s image
• pedagogue’s image
• professional image
• business image
• features of professor’s image
• components of image
• elements of image