Intellectual Virtues – Essential Characteristics for Today´s Teacher

Abstract

Intellectual virtues are very important abilities of a future teacher. They play a major role in cultivating character and stimulating the critical thinking of the student. The intellectual virtue of rationality (trust in reason) is required for a person to develop a network of interconnected virtues – intellectual and moral, in which critical and moral thinking is integrated at the same time. The aim of the study is to identify how students of teaching perceive their own level of development of intellectual virtues. To discover the opinions of respondents, we used R. W. Paul’s scheme of affective strategies (1992), which we integrated with specific intellectual virtues. The research was carried out by n = 241 students of teaching at Prešov University in Prešov. It was the available sample. Due to the fact that the issue of intellectual virtues had so far been studied in Slovakia only in theory, we bring descriptive research and analysis of primary data. The results of the research indicate a lack of training for future teachers in this regard. We consider the absence of such research and, consequently, the absence of the development of the necessary skills in this regard to be the main reason.