Abstract
Good teachers, as models, inspire students towards learning for life and, often, to choose a teaching profession. Researching key elements of model teachers as exemplars is essential for ideas about evaluating university teaching quality, teacher education and professional development. This study explores how 33 university teachers in Kazakhstan recall their ‘model teachers’ from school and university, as identified in 42 narratives of personal experience: interviewed participants remember how the models inspired them when they were students to become teachers themselves. We identify a framework of five metafunctions of good teachers, which are conceptualised in the narratives with cognitive, affective, social, moral, and aesthetic functions found in systematic combinations of a ‘narrative ecology’. This innovative bottom-up study complements current top-down literature on the metafunctions to show their significance as antecedents within teachers’ educational experience. Combinations of these five metafunctions provide university teachers with a holistic framework for professional development.