Popular Teachers and Great Ones

Abstract

Over the last few years, some university leaders have ignited firestorms of controversy with plans to reward faculty members who teach well. Much of the controversy has stemmed from any attempt to identify those outstanding educators through student ratings. At one Texas university, for example, the critics imagined that unscrupulous professors might try to buy high marks from their students with inflated grades or free beer. Behind those controversies lies a much older struggle over the very meaning of good teaching. If there is a difference between good instructors and popular ones, what is it? My own definition stems from the work on students' intentions as they undertake their studies. A sizeable body of research has found that different students will take quite different approaches to their studies that generally fall into one of three broad categories, surface, strategic or deep. Only students in the latter category will consistently intend to understand, to think about implications, applications and possibilities, and only those students are likely to achieve the deepest learning. That same research has found that the predominant approach that students take and achieve can be heavily influenced by the instruction. Some teachers produce lots of students with deep intentions while others rarely produce any. Thus, great teachers are those people with considerable success in fostering deep approaches and results among their students.