Good Teaching: As Identified By Your Peers

The literature on teaching is replete with definitions and examples of good teaching. They include the traits and characteristics of the best instructor/teacher/professor. They have examples of methods and results of surveys that quantify teaching: bad or good. In recent years, the literature included the impact of teaching on the student learner; thus, coming full circle, from teacher to learner. The literature provides good information, but it is the analysis of the current classroom experience of one’s peers that provides reliable information on the teaching of today’s students. Since 1998, over 1000 faculty have pondered over 5 questions concerning good teaching. They have pair-shared the results and those results accumulated. Collectively they defined good teaching; the methods, the results and measures and the need for good teaching to ensure that classes and courses are successful. They even discussed the definition and meaning of successful. They have assigned adjectives and phrases as exemplars for the best practices of instructors/teachers/professors. This paper will discuss the results of the discussions on good teaching. It will tie the results of faculty discussions with the literature and the voice of students who have discussed good teaching with Educational Psychologists. It will show that the fundamentals of good teaching are simple and attainable by every faculty member and it will frame a few of the most important traits and characteristics that the best instructors/teachers/professors possess.