Author: Bhushan Manchanda
All students must have had hundreds of
teachers in their lifetimes. A very few of these teachers they would
remember as being exceptionally good. What are the qualities that
combine to create an excellent, memorable teacher? Why do some teachers
inspire students to work three times harder than they normally would,
while others inspire students to avoid their class? Why do students
learn more from some teachers than others?
Here I have focused on the four essential qualities that distinguish exceptional teachers:
- Knowledge,
- Communication skills,
- Interest, and
- Respect for students.
An Experiment
Here’s an experiment I had done in one
of my earlier assignments. The results may surprise you. Go into one of
the classes you are teaching and have your students take out a sheet of
paper. Ask them to list for you the qualities they feel are important
in a good teacher. Ask them to identify the qualities they admire in the
best teachers they have had. Then give the students enough time to
think about it and write something down. Five minutes is good, but ten
might be better. Let them answer the questions anonymously if they
desire.
What you will get if you combine all of
the responses is a fascinating collage of ideas. I have found that most
of the responses fall into two specific categories:
1) a set of “core qualities” that students recognize in good teachers, and
2) a set of “specific skills” that are developed by good teachers.
“Core qualities” are the essential
characteristics needed to be a good teacher. I would like to concentrate
on these core qualities in this article as under.
1. Knowledge
Students have consistently and clearly targeted as the number one quality of a good teacher exactly what you would expect: knowledge of the subject.
You must be an expert in your field-both theoretical and practical
–preferably with an industry interface and experience if you are going
to be a good teacher in a Management college or Business School. This is
a prerequisite.
2. Communication
The second core quality that good teachers possess is the ability to communicate their knowledge and expertise
to their students. You may be the greatest expert ever in your field,
but what would happen if you lectured in a style and language the
students are not able to comprehend clearly? How much would your
students learn?
It is a common misconception at the
College level that knowledge of a subject is all that’s required to be a
good teacher; that the students should be willing and able to extract
the meat from what you say- regardless of how it is delivered (even if
it is delivered in a incomprehending language or different style). This
might be true at the post graduate level, but elsewhere it is definitely
untrue. It is especially untrue at the undergraduate level. The
teacher’s job is to take advanced knowledge and make it accessible to
the students. A good teacher allows students to understand the material,
and to understand what it means (because it is one thing to understand
how nuclear bombs work, but quite another to understand what nuclear
bombs mean).
A good teacher can take a subject and
help make it crystal clear to the students. A bad teacher can take that
same material and make it impenetrable. Or a bad teacher can devote so
little time and effort to preparation that the material presented is
intrinsically confusing and disorganized. A good teacher is willing to
expend the effort needed to find innovative and creative ways to make
complicated ideas understandable to their students, and to fit new ideas
into the context available to the student. A good teacher can explain
complicated material in a way that students can understand and use.
There is a saying, “Give me a fish and I
eat for a day, teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime.” This is the
philosophy of a good teacher. Give your students an answer and they can
solve one problem, but show students the techniques needed to find the
answer for themselves and they can become self-sufficient in the field.
Students need to be shown how to apply the new techniques you teach to
problem solving.
3. Interest
A good teacher starts with a firm
knowledge of the subject, and builds on that with a clarity and
understanding designed to help students master the material. The best
teachers then go one step further. Because good teachers are interested
in the material being taught, they make the class interesting and relevant to
the students. Knowledge is worthless unless it is delivered to the
students in a form they can understand. But the effort expended making
the material understandable is wasted if the students are disinterested
when it is delivered, or if the students can see no point in learning
the material.
Good teachers recognise this, and work
hard to make their material relevant. They show students how the
material will apply to their lives and their careers. Bad teachers make
material “relevant” by threatening students with failure on a test. Good
teachers go far beyond this: they make students want to learn the material by making it interesting.
This is one of the things that makes
industry and business examples so important and vital to learning in a
business school or college.Industry interface and practical real life
examples make the ideas discussed in class exciting and important to the
teacher, as well as to the students. If the teacher isn’t interested in
what’s being taught, then why should the students be?
4. Respect
Good teachers always possess these three
core qualities: knowledge, the ability to convey to students an
understanding of that knowledge, and the ability to make the material
interesting and relevant to students. Complementing these three is a
fourth: quality: good teachers have a deep-seated
concern and respect for the students in the classroom. Why else would a
teacher put in the time and effort needed to create a high quality
class?
The creation of a good class requires an
immense amount of work. You don’t simply come up with clear
explanations,industry cases and examples and experiments for the class
off the top of your head. You don’t create fair, consistent, high
quality tests,questionaires and homework assignments (read “learning
experiences”) five minutes before you hand them out. You don’t figure
out ways to integrate new materials and research into a class in an
understandable way on your way to your college or institute in the
morning. You work at this sort of quality all the time. You spend time
with your students so you can learn about holes in their understanding.
You read and write and create to build an exciting and interesting class
every day. The only thing that would drive you to do that is a concern
and respect for the students in your classroom.
Conclusion
When you strive and work to become a
good teacher and to create a good class, the four core qualities are
essential: knowledge, the skills to convey that knowledge, the ability to
make the material you are teaching interesting and relevant, and a
deep-seated respect for the students.Without these four core
qualities, good teaching will just not exist and take place.
What is Good Teaching ?
Source : http://tragaci.com
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