What the Best College Teachers Do

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1. cottonseedSep 2020
   Check out What the Best College Teachers Do and What The Best College Students Do by Ken Bain.
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2. ganeumannMar 2014
   So there's a difference between teaching and motivating. A good teacher does both, of course, and not just with younger students. I think you're thinking about the motivational aspects of criticizing the kids?

   There's a ton of research on how to motivate in the teaching environment. Some basics:

   There's a big difference between extrinsic motivation and intrinsic motivation. Extrinsic means you are doing something because someone if rewarding you for doing it/punishing you for not doing it. Intrinsic means you are doing it because you, yourself, want to do it. In a classroom, grades are extrinsic motivation, interest in the subject is intrinsic. Both motivations work while they are present. But studies show that when extrinsic motivation stops, so does learning. That is, someone may do very well in a class to get good grades, but when they are done with the class they will stop learning the subject (if all they were in it for were the grades.) In the military, boot-camp motivation works while the soldier is being yelled at, but as soon as the sergeant goes away, so does discipline. (Deci, Edward L. and Richard M. Ryan, _Intrinsic Motivation and Self-Determination in Human Behavior_.) The key to getting motivation right is how the person being motivated views the reward or punishment. Or, in systems terms, you get what you measure.

   This reflects on the method in the article. If the kids were learning chess to impress the teacher, they would lose motivation when they are criticised. But if the kids are learning chess because they want to win, they gain motivation when they learn ways to make that happen. Motivation is important.

   Generally, it's better to be non-judgemental when offering a critique of students' work. I think she fails here a bit. But offering a critique is very important. If the critique is important, and the student wants to learn, then they focus on the content of the critique. The critique, also, has to be fair. If the critique is viewed as punishment, then the students might start attempting to please the teacher with theater. So if she called them lazy and they saw that as punishment for making moves too fast, they might engage in business-theater, making moves slower without thinking; this would allow them to avoid the punishment of being called lazy. But if she is correct in noting that they were, in fact, lazy, then they will recognize it as fair criticism and respond. (Kids are world-class judges of fairness, as all parents know.)

   Also, students do much better (and are happier with) classes that demand high performance but allow them to work their way to success. (Clinchy, Blythe, "Issues of Gender in Teaching and Learning", Jrnl of Excellence in College Teaching 1 (1990):52-67.) The important thing is that the students feel some control over their ability to do better. (Also why you should never tell your kid "you are smart", this makes it sound like it's something they are, not something they do; i.e. something they have no control over.)

   I think if you read any decent book on pedagogy (my favorite is "What the Best College Teachers Do", by Ken Bain) you'll see that there is a huge amount of research on how kids learn and how they are motivated to learn. That most of this research seems mainly ignored in the real world is unfortunate.

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3. aikSep 2011
   Some of the key points I found interesting:

   - Great teachers tended to set big goals for their students.

   - Great teachers were perpetually looking for ways to improve their effectiveness.

   - Superstar teachers had four other tendencies in common: they avidly recruited students and their families into the process; they maintained focus, ensuring that everything they did contributed to student learning; they planned exhaustively and purposefully—for the next day or the year ahead—by working backward from the desired outcome; and they worked relentlessly, refusing to surrender to the combined menaces of poverty, bureaucracy, and budgetary shortfalls.

   - Great teachers frequently check for understanding, and don't make the rookie mistake of asking "do you understand?"

   - For many highly effective teachers, the measure of a well-executed routine is that it continues in the teacher’s absence.

   - What predicts success: A history of perseverance, or "grit” — defined as perseverance and a passion for long-term goals.

   - Success as a teacher: Teachers who scored high in “life satisfaction” — reporting that they were very content with their lives—were 43 percent more likely to perform well in the classroom than their less satisfied colleagues. These teachers “may be more adept at engaging their pupils, and their zest and enthusiasm may spread to their students.”

   - Past performance is a great indicator of future performance.

   - A master’s degree in education seems to have no impact on classroom effectiveness.

   - Important when measuring success: Were you prepared? Did you achieve your objective in five minutes (or whatever other time)?

   Not mentioned in the article: A great book on this topic is "What the Best College Teachers Do" by Ken Bain. Ken does his own research into what makes a great teacher and has some fascinating findings. The huge effort that highly successful teachers put into their students is just incredible, though daunting, and gives me a lot of respect for the profession.

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4. aikJul 2011
   Perhaps we need to talk in scales or include some comparators here. I completely agree that difficulty does drop some with more subject knowledge, teaching experience, and familiarity with the subject and types of questions and students, but by how much really? To me it sounds like it's being suggested that teaching becomes "easy"? Effortless? Not necessarily mentally taxing? Not necessarily time consuming? I can't see how one could _effectively_ teach and think this.

   Again, I don't see teaching as simply "transferring" facts/knowledge. Students can test well and have no conceptual understanding whatsoever. Or, students can show understanding but have underlying mental models untouched (making them even more confused than previously). Both of these cases are failures.

   The book "What the Best College Teachers Do" has amazing insights on how involved, dedicated, knowledgeable, and wise very successful and effective teachers are. The amount of thought and effort they put into their courses is staggering, so I'm approaching this discussion from that frame of mind, rather than what the average teacher (or student teacher) does.

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5. dhessOct 2010
   I was just reading about extrinsic motivators today in the book, What the Best College Teachers Do. The research cited there dates back to the 1970s and the work of Edward L. Deci. Apparently what he and his colleagues found is that most extrinsic motivators (money, prizes, grades) actually do work as long as they continue to be applied, but their effect on motivation or engagement is lost once the extrinsic motivator is removed; and, in fact, application of an extrinsic motivator appears to weaken any intrinsic motivation that existed before the extrinsic motivator was applied.

   This theory has ramifications not only for paying students to go to school, or for good performance, but also whether grades are ultimately harmful to long-term student learning and comprehension. The research suggests that students who perceive getting good grades as a reward for studying tend to view learning as a performance or competition, not as a quest for mastery or self-fulfillment. When they graduate into the real world and are no longer rewarded with grades, they tend to stop learning, because the extrinsic motivator (grades) is removed. They also tend to "study for the test" and forget the lessons soon after, as the goal is always to perform well on the next exam, not to retain knowledge.

   Not all extrinsic motivators appear to be damaging to intrinsic motivation. For example, the researchers (and those who have continued Deci's work) found that encouragement and praise were extrinsic motivators that often reinforce, or at least sustain, intrinsic motivation. The theory is that people (especially children) lose intrinsic motivation if they think they're being manipulated by the external reward: verbal encouragement and social acceptance are supposedly less transparent means of motivation than, say, money or grades.

   Before reading this part of the book, I had thought that perhaps paying students for good academic performance was a good idea. Now I wonder if perhaps paying parents for their child's good performance is the right way to go, accompanied by a short course on developmental psychology for the parents.

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