Skip to main content icon/video/no-internet
icon backReturn to Entries

Effective Teaching, Characteristics of

Over the past several decades, a revolution has occurred in the definitions of ‘good’ teaching. Researchers have found that defining good teachers by community ideals, personality characteristics, number of credit hours earned, or college grade point average proved disappointing, as these variables showed little relationship to what teachers actually do in the classroom. This directed researchers to study the impact of specific teacher activities on the specific cognitive and affective behaviors of their students. The term good teaching changed to effective teaching, and the research focus shifted from studying teachers exclusively to studying teachers and their effects on students. This new approach to studying classroom behavior has made the teacher–student relationship in the classroom the focus of modern definitions of effective teaching.

Linking Teacher Behavior with Student Performance

During this new era of research in classrooms, researchers developed methods of studying the classroom interaction patterns of teachers and students. Their goal was to discover which patterns of teacher behavior promoted desirable student outcomes. With a rich variety of classroom observation instruments, a picture of classroom activity could be captured within and across research studies and could be related to various measures of school achievement, such as better scores on classroom and standardized tests, an increase in the incidence of successful problem solving, and improved learning skills.

It was in this manner that consistent patterns of effective teaching began to emerge in studies conducted by different researchers. As in all research, some studies provided contradictory results or found no relationships among certain types of classroom interactions and student outcomes. But many studies found patterns of teacher–student interaction that consistently produced desirable student outcomes. The following are some of the most important characteristics of effective teaching to emerge from this research.

Key Behaviors Contributing to Effective Teaching

From this research approximately 10 teacher behaviors have shown promising relationships to desirable student performance, primarily as measured by classroom assessments and standardized tests. Five of these behaviors have been consistently supported by research studies over the past three decades. Another five have had some support from the research findings and appear logically related to effective teaching. The first five are key behaviors, because they are considered essential for effective teaching. The second five are helping behaviors that can be used in combinations to implement the key behaviors. The five key behaviors for effective teaching are (1) lesson clarity, (2) instructional variety, (3) teacher task, (4) student engagement in the learning process, and (5) student success rate.

Lesson Clarity

Lesson clarity refers to how clear a teacher's presentation is to the class, as indicated in the following examples:

More Effective Teachers

  • Make their points clear to learners who may be at different levels of understanding
  • Explain concepts in ways that help students follow along in a logical step-by-step order
  • Have an oral delivery that is direct, audible to all students, and free of distracting mannerisms

Less Effective Teachers

  • Use vague, ambiguous, or indefinite language
  • Use overly complicated sentences that convey more than a single thought at a time
  • Give directions that often result in student requests for clarification

One of the findings from research on lesson clarity is that teachers vary considerably on this behavior. Not all teachers communicate clearly and directly to their students without wandering, speaking above students' levels of comprehension, or using speech patterns that impair their presentation's clarity. A teacher with a high degree of clarity spends less time going over material and has more questions answered correctly the first time through the content, allowing more time for instruction.

...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles

Read next

More like this

Sage Recommends

We found other relevant content for you on other Sage platforms.

close

Have you created a personal profile? Login or create a profile so that you can save clips, playlists and searches

close
close
close Signed In to profile You are signed in as:
close
Logged in Institution Institution