Abstract
The paper aims to contribute to the current understanding of teacher authority by focusing on possible interpretations of this phenomenon among student teachers from different sociocultural backgrounds. It is based on data collected during a pilot e-learning course focused on the nature of teacher authority which is a part of the European project called SoNetTe.
The project and the course have made it possible for pre-service teachers from three European countries -Czech Republic, Estonia and Finland - to get together and discuss what they believe teacher authority is, what in their opinion it should be based on, and to learn, adapt and utilize various research methods in order to study the phenomenon. All participants eventually carried out a research and collected data from their peers in their respective countries.
This paper presents the comparison of the most significant results of the analysis and interpretation of data collected during the quantitative research conducted at the end of the course using the adapted questionnaire of teacher interaction style.