Evaluating Chemistry Teachers Within the Context of Teacher Characteristics

There are several characteristics arising from the role that education and training activities impose on teachers. That teachers have different characteristics stems from the fact that the teaching role has a multi-dimensional behavior pattern. Therefore, teacher characteristics are being researched in various fields of science and various subjects. One of these domains is about the characteristics of chemistry teachers. Teacher characteristics are decisive for both effective education and educational improvement. Therefore, it is important to analyze the characteristics of chemistry teachers within a systematic approach. The aim of this study is to try to propose a multi-criteria model for the analysis of characteristics of chemistry teachers and their evaluation in the context of teacher characteristics. With the multi-criteria decision-making model proposed in the study, a 9th grade chemistry teacher was evaluated in detail and holistically. The proposed model allowed the evaluation of teacher characteristics on the basis of cognitive, affective and psychomotor dimensions. In this study, the level of the roles of each of teacher characteristics in evaluating the effectiveness of chemistry education was also determined. Furthermore, the competence level of the chemistry teacher in this study was determined based on each characteristic.


Introduction
The phenomenon of education is one of the main tools that people use to survive on the planet and overcome the difficulties they face. Education also enables the achievement or realization of the aims with the learning phenomenon that is unique to human. Depending on the learning capacity and ability of human beings, the search for understanding the universe, nature, living things and the society in which they live in, the historical process continued uninterruptedly with the educational activity. Throughout the historical process, the search of human beings in the scientific context has found existence in the field of philosophy until the last three centuries (Coşkun, 2016;Özlem, 1994;Yavuz, 2008). However, as a result of the accumulation of knowledge created by mankind in thousands of years before the last three centuries, and as a result of the increasing accumulation of knowledge in the last three hundred years, human beings have tried to realize their aims with different fields of science. One of these major domains is defined as chemistry.
Through chemistry education given at different academic levels, it is possible to transfer the knowledge about the field of chemistry to the next generations, solve the problems with the current knowledge, and also acquire the knowledge required for the solution of the problems of chemistry. However, as in other fields of science, there are differences or difficulties in the phenomenon of chemistry education stemming from the nature of chemistry (Mete, 2018;Tsaparlis, 2015). Therefore, theoretical and practical studies are carried out to improve the effectiveness of chemistry education. In the literature review, various studies (Batı, 2018;Çalık, Ayas and Ünal, 2006;Ulutaş, Üner, Turan Oluk, Yalçın Çelik and Akkuş, 2015) were conducted in different contexts to improve the effectiveness of chemistry education. One of them is the characteristics of chemistry teachers. In the literature, few studies (Childs, 2009) focused on the characteristics of chemistry teachers while teacher characteristics were subject to study within different contexts in other fields (Arsal, 2004;Özkan ve Arslantaş, 2013;Yetişir, 2014). The main reason for investigating teacher characteristics in various fields of science and in different subjects stems from the fact that the teaching role has a multi-dimensional behavior pattern. This multi-dimensionality arises from the relationship of teachers with various segments such as students, friends who are teachers, administrators, society, school, family as part of their roles and the nature of the phenomenon which is called learning.
As can be seen from the literature findings above, it is important to analyze and evaluate teacher characteristics with a systematic approach for effective education. As it was determined in the studies in the literature, it is necessary to examine the roles of teacher characteristics in education in a holistic framework because each teacher characteristic has a role on the effectiveness of education; therefore, the role of each teacher characteristic in educational effectiveness will probably be at different levels. This shows that the role of each teacher characteristic in education can be of relative importance. Therefore, analyzing each teacher characteristic independently of other teacher characteristics may lead to an incomplete assessment. The use of a holistic approach is required to determine the effect of teacher characteristics on education. Another issue that needs to be considered in this analysis process is to consider the relationship between teacher characteristics and cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning domains because learning domains are important in terms of targeted outcomes in an educational process (Gömleksiz and Kan, 2012). In the education process, the learning domains in the education given to the students differ according to the targeted outcomes. Therefore, the relative weight or importance of teacher characteristics in relation to learning domains should be taken into consideration in this research process because the relationship between teacher characteristics and cognitive, affective and psychomotor learning domains may not be the same. On the other hand, determining the level of functionality of teacher characteristics in practice is another problem that needs to be analyzed. Determining this situation and making an assessment will be able to answer to what extent the characteristics of teachers are functional in the effectiveness of the education given. Thus, it will be possible to evaluate the effectiveness of the education given in the context of teacher characteristics. However, such a study requires a framework based on teacher characteristics. In the literature, there was no study that included the subjects in the context mentioned in this study. However, in the literature review, there were no studies aimed at evaluating chemistry education within the context of teacher characteristics.
The main goal of this study is to analyze the characteristics of chemistry teachers and to try to propose a multi-criteria model for evaluating teachers in the context of chemistry teacher characteristics. One of the sub-goals is to determine the priorities of teacher characteristics in the effectiveness of chemistry education. The second sub-goal is to determine the level of competence of the chemistry teacher assessed on the basis of each characteristic.

Method
The method of this study was designed according to the assumptions of Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) and TOPSIS multi-criteria decision making techniques. The scope of the study was 9th grade chemistry course. The analysis unit of the study is a chemistry teacher teaching 9 th graders. The data of the study was provided in three ways according to the purpose of the research and the assumptions of the analysis techniques used: The first one is the binary comparison of the learning domains according to the opinion of the expert group formed in the study. The expert group consists of the instructor of the course, an experienced chemistry teacher and the author of the study. The provision of the second data was again, based on the opinion of the expert group, for the data needed for the ranking of teacher characteristics by TOPSIS technique. The third piece of data of the study was obtained from the responses given to the questionnaire consisting of 22 items (Childs, 2009) by the self-assessment approach of the 9th grade chemistry teacher himself ( Table 5). The items of the questionnaire used to provide the data in the study were taken from a study which was conducted in order to improve chemistry education in the literature (Childs, 2009). In the literature, the characteristics of good teachers were classified under three dimensions. These dimensions are attitudes towards students, personal qualifications of teachers and teaching skills and practices of good teachers. The items of the survey are as follows: Analytical Hierarchy Process and TOPSIS techniques were used in this study to improve chemistry education within the framework of teacher characteristics. AHP structure is used to solve hierarchical and multidimensional problems. In AHP, a model representing the structure of the problem should be established first. Therefore, the elements constituting the problem of the research are determined first. In the model, the elements of the problem are indicated in a hierarchical manner (Saaty, 1990). After the model is created in AHP, a series of operations are performed for analysis. First of all, binary comparison matrices are formed by considering the levels and groups in which the elements in the AHP model take place. The comparison of the i criterion and j criterion in AHP is indicated by aij. On the contrary, the comparison of j criterion with i criterion shows the term aji. There is a reverse relationship between the components. Another AHP feature is aij ≠ 0' (Vashishtha and Ramachandran, 2006). Binary comparisons in AHP are made with the scale (Table 1) improved by Saaty (1980) (Yüksel and Geban, 2018 In AHP, the matrices determined as a result of binary comparisons of the elements contained in the model are square (nxn) matrices. In each binary comparison matrix, a size-dependent comparison is performed. The weight of one element of the binary comparison matrix is calculated by the equation (A- max ) W = 0. In the equation, "A" refers to matrix and "W" refers to eigenvector. " max " term, on the other hand, represents "A"s eigenvalue (Chou, Lee and Chung, 2004). Another feature of AHP is the ability to calculate the consistency of comparisons. This feature predicts that the comparisons will be consistent. Consistency is based on the logical consistency of comparisons. For this, inconsistency levels of matrices are calculated. To do this, consistency index (C.I) is calculated first. The consistency index is obtained by the equation ( max -n)/(n-1). In this equation, "n" refers to the dimension of binary comparison matrix. Following the calculation of consistency index, the inconsistency ratio (IR) is obtained by (C.I) / (R.I) (Ananda and Herath, 2003;Herath, 2004;Saaty, 1977). The random index (R.I) value in the equation differs according to the size of the binary comparison matrix. If the calculated inconsistency value is less than 0.10, it means that significant comparisons are made. (Cheng and Li 2007;Saaty 1994). Otherwise, as there is inconsistency in binary comparisons, binary comparisons are performed again. When the elements (n) of the comparison matrices are large (n≥5), the calculations are performed with the Expert Choice (2000) decision-making program.

Attitudes towards Students
TOPSIS is another multi-criteria decision-making technique used in this study to improve chemistry education within the framework of teacher characteristics. (Technique for Order Performance by Similarity to İdeal Solution). The TOPSIS technique includes a large number of elements in its structure and also features ratings based on multiple criteria. TOPSIS was improved by Hwang and Yoon (1981). In the literature review, it was seen that TOPSIS technique was used in the analysis of many and various multi-criteria problems. (Dağdeviren, Yavuz and Kılınç, 2009;Ersöz, Kabak and Yılmaz, 2011;Zyoud and Fuchs-Hanusch, 2017). Shyur (2006) explained the primary steps of TOPSIS technique as follows: Step 1: Form the decision matrix for order. The structure of the decision matrix is illustrated as below.
A j shows the potential alternatives; i = 1,… m; Fi indicates the related i. characteristic or criterion, and j = 1, . . . ,n; f ij is a value on condition that each alternative is compared to Ai and each Fj criterion.
Step 2 Step 3: Calculate the weighted normalized decision matrix which is calculated by the multiplication of normalized decision matrix and the related weights. Weighted normalized values are calculated as follows: the = , = 1, … , ; = 1, … . , , statement indicates the weight of j. characteristic or criterion.
Step 4. Identify the ideal and negative ideal solutions. J indicates benefit criterion and ' J cost criterion, it follows as: , , Step 5. Calculate split measurements. This is calculated using m-dimensioned Euclidean distance. Splitting each alternative from the ideal solution   i D  is as follows:

Findings
In the study, the weights of the learning domains were taken as a criterion in calculating the importance of teacher characteristics. For this reason, the weights of learning domains in relation to teacher characteristics in chemistry education were primarily determined according to expert opinion. Analytical hierarchy process was used to determine the weights of learning domains. In order to determine the weights of learning domains, paired comparisons were made according to the opinion of the expert group. The expert group was addressed the following questions in binary comparisons: How important is the cognitive domain compared to the psychomotor and affective domain in the assessment of chemistry teacher characteristics? How important is the psychomotor domain compared to the affective domain? The expert group answered these questions according to the scale in Table 1. The comparison matrix prepared accordingly is given in Table 2. The data of the comparison matrix were transferred to the Expert Choice (2000) program and the weights were determined. According to the findings of this study, cognitive learning area has the highest weight. In the second and third place, the affective learning area follows the dynamic learning domain. The consistency ratio of the matrix (0.08) showed that comparisons were made significantly. After determining the weights related to learning domains in the study, the importance and weights of teacher characteristics were calculated by TOPSIS technique. For this purpose, each teacher characteristic in this study was evaluated according to learning domains. Evaluation was made by expert group formed in the study. The question asked to the expert group for this evaluation was as follows: For instance, how important is "the ability of the teacher to be accessible outside the classroom" from a cognitive point of view? For instance, how important is "the ability of the teacher to be accessible outside the classroom" from a psychomotor point of view? For instance, how important is "the ability of the teacher to be accessible outside the classroom" from an affective point of view? The response of the expert group to these questions was done with a Likert-type five-point scale. On the five-point scale used, 1 represents low and 5 indicates high. In the study, all teacher characteristics were answered by the expert group with an evaluation between these degrees.
The results of the TOPSIS analysis are given in Table 3. In the last column of Table 3, the order of importance of each teacher characteristic is given. Accordingly, it was discovered that "teachers' desire to teach students critical thinking skills" got in the first place, with "use of simple language" in the second place, "teachers' desire for students to learn and have full knowledge of course contents" in the third order or importance, "well-prepared and well-organized lessons" in the fourth place, and "having course-related materials" in the fifth order of importance. The order of importance of other teacher characteristics is given in Table 3. In this study, besides the determination of the order of importance of teacher characteristics by TOPSIS technique, weights of chemistry teacher characteristics were also calculated. This calculation was made by standardizing Ci values in Table 3. Standardized Ci values calculated accordingly are given in the second column of Table 5. At this stage of the study, the chemistry teacher was evaluated in terms of teacher characteristics. In the study, the assessment was made by the self-assessment approach of the 9th grade chemistry course by the teacher himself and the answers given to a 22-item questionnaire (Childs, 2009). The answers of the teachers within the scope of the study were made with the scale given in Table 4 (Yüksel and Dağdeviren 2006). The evaluation question was: For instance, "at what level is teachers' desire for students to learn and have full knowledge of course contents?" The answer to this question was answered with one of the competence levels given in Table 4. For example, the answer to this question is very good and the corresponding value is 1.0. In Table 5, the responses to the evaluation of teacher characteristics were provided in the third column, with statistical values in the fourth and the calculated values of the evaluation of the teacher in this study in relation to teacher characteristics in the fifth column. The level of characteristic in the last column of Table 5 was obtained through the multiplication of standardized values (C i ) and competence values (PV).  Table 6 presents data on the detailed analysis and evaluation of teacher characteristics. In the second column of Table 6, the general weight of each teacher characteristic was given, and in the third column, the level of adequacy of each teacher characteristic was evaluated and the deviation values were given in the fourth column. The deviation is the difference between the overall weight value and the competence level of the teacher assessed for the characteristic. No deviations were found in this study in the following teacher characteristics: "Teachers' desire for students to learn and have full knowledge of course contents", "Teachers' desire for students to improve critical thinking skills", "well-prepared and well-organized lessons", "avoiding being a wise guy", "considering students' previous knowledge", "appropriate and immediate feedback for student work", and "Fun and rewarding activities for student participation". There seems to be a 0,138634 deviation in the total of the other characteristics.

Discussion & Conclusion
In this study, a multi-criteria model was proposed to analyze the characteristics of chemistry teachers and evaluate the competence of teachers in the context of characteristics of chemistry teachers. The AHP and TOPSIS techniques used in the proposed model provide a holistic approach to the aim of the study and allow the detailed evaluation of the results. Besides the functionality of the methodological results of the study, it was also possible to analyze and evaluate the teacher characteristics, which was one of the main arguments of the study in the context of learning domains. According to AHP results, when the learning domains were evaluated in terms of weights, the cognitive learning domain had the highest weight. The psychomotor learning domain was in the second place, with affective learning domain in the third place. These results showed that cognitive learning domain was more important than the other two domains in the evaluation of teacher characteristics whereas psychomotor and affective learning domains were two important components in the evaluation of teacher characteristics. This result of the study stated that teacher characteristics should not be considered and evaluated in the context of only one component. Although the characteristics of a teacher require a cognitive-weighted behavior and attitude, it can be said that it is important that teachers have characteristics that take into account the psychomotor and affective learning domains.
With the model proposed in the study, the importance of teacher characteristics and the analysis of teacher characteristics in the context of learning domains were calculated by TOPSIS method. According to the results of TOPSIS analysis, it was found that "teacher's desire to improve students' critical thinking skills" was the first among the characteristics consisting of 22 items. The four characteristics followed subsequently were "use of simple language", "teachers' desire for learners to learn and have full knowledge of course content", "well-prepared and well-organized lessons", and "having course-related materials". The total weight of the teacher characteristics identified during the first five significance values calculated as a result of standardizing the order of importance of TOPSIS analysis was 0,336. The weight of teacher characteristics in the first five order of importance had an important share in the other 17 items. Therefore, it can be said that these five characteristics have a distinctive role in the assessment of the characteristics of chemistry teachers. In practice, teachers or administrators will be able to make it easier for them to achieve an effective result in education by taking these five characteristics into consideration and as a result of their work towards these five characteristics.
In the study, it was determined that the role of each teacher's characteristics in the given chemistry education was determined as well as the degree of competency of the teacher providing chemistry education according to the characteristics of the teachers. According to the results of this study, the teacher in this study was found to be very high in terms of competence levels in relation to the following characteristics: "teachers' desire for students to learn and have full knowledge of course content", "teachers' desire to improve students' critical thinking skills", "well-prepared and well-organized lessons", "avoiding being a wise guy", "considering students' previous knowledge", "appropriate and immediate feedback for student work", and "fun and rewarding activities for student participation". In other words, the teacher was not found to be incompetent in terms of these characteristics. Despite deviations in other characteristics, the total deviation was 0.11386. On the other hand, according to all teacher characteristics, the total competence level of the teacher in the study was 0.8614. It can be said that the teacher, who has this level of qualification, has an adequate teaching quality.