A good teacher is...

Thanks to Ewan's del.icio.us feed, I came across this article from the BBC about good teachers. Researchers were asked to pool their findings in an attempt to answer the question, "What makes a good teacher?" The results were interesting.

One researcher, Professor Patricia Broadfoot, was reported to have said that

the key ingredients of good teaching included: creating an atmosphere of mutual respect and fairness in the classroom, providing opportunities for "active learning" and humour to encourage pupil engagement, making learning interesting, and explaining things clearly.

According to the author, another researcher, Debra Myhill, reported that

The crucial ingredient... was a teacher's ability to reflect on his or her own performance and then to change it.

and that

teachers should neither passively comply with government initiatives, nor should they point blank refuse to implement them. Instead they should "adapt them creatively".

A third researcher, Mary James, said that

the teacher should "promote the active engagement of the learner".

and the author stated:

She noted that teachers liked to be given practical guidance on how to improve their teaching, yet what they really needed to develop was their own judgment of what works and what does not work in their own teaching.

The author of the article, Mike Baker, then goes on to say

The big question now is whether - after 20 years of being told exactly what and how to teach - there are enough teachers ready to be "creatively subversive"?

Also, after years of being told in precise detail how to teach, will teachers feel ready both to devise their own way of teaching and engaging students and also constantly to evaluate and adapt their own teaching methods.

These questions are good ones, I think. I have seen my K-12 teacher friends struggle with mandated curricula that, in some cases, tell you what page you should be working on if today is January 29.

I think, though, from talking with other teachers, from reading the blogs of some really great teachers like Darren, Clarence, Jo, Graham, Eric and a bunch of others that there is, indeed, hope. There are a lot of good teachers out there. And those of us who aren't as good as we would like to be have tremendous opportunities to learn. We can all learn from each other.