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SMART TEACHING
www.SmartTeaching.org
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35. Good/Poor Teaching
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©2006 Ron Fitzgerald, D. Ed.
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This is a ten point checklist that a teacher, professor or trainer can use for self-evaluation, an evaluator can use to give helping suggestions, or a school of education can use to guide those learning to teach effectively. Supporting topics on this web site are listed in parentheses.
Questions on Quality
Consider the difference between a “yes” answer or a “no” answer to each of the questions in this graphic summary:
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INDICATORS OF GOOD TEACHING |
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INDICATORS OF POOR TEACHING |
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My course and units focus on measurable performance objectives that will give students useful skills. (Topic #19) |
1 |
My course and units focus on covering subject matter thoroughly. |
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I use a researched teaching “system” that pursues constant improvement in student achievement. (Topic #2, Topic #3, Topic #34) |
2 |
I teach in the way that is most comfortable for me, a style to which I expect students to adjust. |
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I discover and use the background and interests of students before teaching or guiding them. (Topic #1, Topic #9, Topic #10, Topic #11, Topic #12, Topic #14, Topic #16) |
3 |
I plan a thorough course and then teach it without losing time to student surveys. |
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I provide learning style and talent options to my students. (Topic #6, Topic #7, Topic # 8, Topic #12) |
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I teach in the one way I consider best for all students. |
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I begin each unit with a unique and motivating experience to connect to the real world. (Topic #2) |
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My course is important. I expect students to recognize that automatically. |
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My units include a focus on having students develop emotional intelligence. (Topic #13, Topic #15) |
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I concentrate on course subject matter, not on human interactions. |
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I use formative assessment and data analysis tools WITH my students to monitor and improve learning. (Topic #17, Topic #18, Topic #20, Topic #23, Topic #24,Topic # 33, Topic #36) |
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I teach and then test to give the grades or marks each student earned. My emphasis is on tests for giving a grade. |
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I keep current on research on learning and teaching and use it to improve my service. (All) |
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I concentrate on knowing the subject matter that I teach since I already know how to teach. |
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I help students, parents, and peers to be informed on learning research (sharing, working together). |
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I focus only on subject matter; that is what I teach. |
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I am active in promoting effective leadership and use of learning research in educational reform. (Topic #12, Topic #20, Topic # 25, Topic #27, Topic #28, Topic #30, Topic #31) |
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I work diligently at teaching and leave the politics of education to others. |
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Clearly this list is based on these basic assumptions:
- It is a teacher’s job to help individual students learn, not just to disclose subject matter whether or not it is learned.
- The best learning occurs when teachers care about and pay attention to individual students and their differences.
- Schools can be most effective when good teachers help the students, the public, and government officials to understand what promotes and what hinders learning.
The third or last assumption above is especially important today because global competition is promoting more attention to reform in education. When that reform is based on uninformed opinion of what works, reform is ineffective. For example, the opinion that knowing subject matter means you are a “qualified” teacher is a puzzling myth. It is difficult to understand how the myth got started. Nearly every college graduate has had experience with professors who are recognized subject matter experts but also atrociously ineffective teachers giving courses in which you must try to learn in spite of the poor teaching. See Topic #34 on this web site. Poor teachers sometimes know their subject matter and act as though just reviewing it is teaching! The myth then gets expanded into illogical attacks on schools of education where there are good and poor teachers as in most college departments. To discredit useless myths like this, teachers should unite and insist on recognition of basic realities like the fact that a good teacher is one who knows his or her subject matter AND who knows the techniques needed to help different students learn effectively. It does no good for a teacher to know subject matter if he or she is ineffective in helping students to learn.
The importance of teaching techniques needs to be emphasized much more than it has been emphasized in educational reform. One of my most common disappointments in many years of supervising and evaluating high school teaching was encountering frustrated visual learners in classes where fully qualified (in the context of subject matter) teachers gave excessive emphasis to words and numbers while neglecting visual aids to learning (pictures, videos, diagrams, graphic organizers, etc.). When the imbalance was corrected, many of these students blossomed.
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