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WHAT MAKES A GOOD TEACHER ?Mordechai MironPublished online: 06 Jul 2006.

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Higher Education in Europe, Vol. VIII, No. 2, 1983 45

WHAT MAKES A GOOD TEACHER ?

Mordechai MIRON

Educators and the public at large assume that the teacher is a deci-sive factor in the success and effectiveness of any educational process.The teacher is expected to have special qualities and behave in a certainmanner. Yet there is no clearcut definition of the essential nature of"good instruction". The questions what makes a "good teacher" J, whatmust he do, and what traits should he possess have puzzled educatorsand researchers for a long time. Various studies dealing with the natureof "effective teaching" at different levels of education, including highereducation, have failed to clarify the issues and define standards bywhich one may evaluate a "good teacher" (Ryans, 1960 ; Dunkin andBiddle, 1974).

Studies in general education have revealed two main categorieswithin the evaluations : cognitive and affective aspects of teaching. Theaffective aspects include the teacher's emotions, values, and personality ;behaviour is a function of the teacher's personality (Ryans, 1960). Theteacher is seen as the primary means of stimulating a positive emotionalresponse toward learning (Mourer, 1960). A teacher's duty includes im-parting educational ideals and providing tools for coping with the mate-rial (Crawford and Bradshaw, 1968 ; Grush and Costin, 1975).

The cognitive aspects include arousing the student's interest, com-municating ideas in a clear and organized manner, and impressing thestudent with the teacher's own expertise in the field (Miron, 1981).A teacher, however, helps the student to develop his own skillsand thinking processes rather than reproducing himself in the garb ofthe student ; he should motivate the student toward achievement (French,1957 ; Musella and Rusch, 1968 ; Gadzella, 1968 ; Eble, 1971 ; Segal, 1975).

With respect to university teaching, studies revealed three maincategories : teaching ability, research ability, and university service.

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46 What Makes a Good Teacher ?

Students' conceptions clearly reflected specific attributes of college in-struction and the academic norms as defined by research activity (Sub-koviak, 1974).

All of the above results are scanty and leave substantive questionsstill unanswered. The present study attempts to fill the void with specificinformation about the qualities of university teaching considered desir-able by students. These qualities include the teacher's personal traits,student-teacher interaction, educational objectives, and instructionalmethods. The latter three aspects reflect what is referred to as "advising"and "delivery" in teaching-evaluation literature (Dressel, 1970). Thequality usually termed "scholarship" has been combined with otherpersonal traits into one broad category in this study.

It would be logical to assume that students in different areas ofstudy would have different conceptions of "effective teaching" (Crawfordand Bradshaw, 1968 ; Shapira and Etzioni, 1973). In the former study,students, faculty, and administrative personnel all evinced different con-ceptions of teaching, and in the latter study there were significant differ-ences among attitudes of humanities, social science, and natural sciencestudents towards the role and structure of university methods of instruc-tion. Therefore we structured the present study to measure the concep-tions of the student body as a whole, as well as to compare students'attitudes according their academic disciplines.

The present study, based on factor analysis, has two main aims :

1. To define the characteristics (determinants) of "effective teach-ing" as defined by students.

2. To determine if there are any differences between students fromvarious disciplines with regard to the structure and content of theirconcept of "'effective teaching".

The Study

The Sample

The study sample consisted of 589 undergraduate students takingcompulsory second-year courses in various departments of Tel AvivUniversity. Since we wished to reach the largest possible number ofstudents, the questionnaire was administered to all compulsory second-year courses in the law school, the medical school, and the life sciencedepartments. In the humanities and social science departments, whichinclude a very large number of students, the questionnaire was admin-istered to a random sample of students in compulsory courses.

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M. Miron 47

The Questionnaire

The questionnaire prepared for this study contained 36 items aimedat eliciting students' definitions of "effective teaching". These items re-presented the following three categories :

a. Delivery (including method and objectives) : preparation andorganization of the lesson ; encouraging the students to think ; motivat-ing students ; interesting presentation of material ; clear and compre-hensible statements of ideas.

b. Advising : willingness to help students ; accessibility ; consid-eration of students ; feedback.

c. Personal Qualities : scholarly (or lack of) approach ; a sense ofhumour; popularity among students ; personal appearance ; flexibility ;patience.

Two or three statements were presented for each trait, both posi-tively, and negatively. The items were randomly scattered throughout thequestionnaire. Subjects ranked the extent of their agreement or disa-greement on a scale of 5 (from complete agreement to absolute disa-greement). These are some examples of the statements :

1. A "good course" is one which is well-prepared and well-or-ganized.

2. A "good instructor" is one who is open to talk with studentsand will help them outside of the class.

3. An instructor lacking a sense of humour is not a "good teacher".

These items were based on the factor analysis results of a previousquestionnaire which was identical in content and structure. The ques-tionnaire was anonymous and was administered during actual class time.

Results and Discussion

Determinants of "Effective Teaching" According tothe Factorial Structure of Students' Concepts

The question arises if the range of characteristics investigated inthe study may be grouped' according to the above-mentioned categories(delivery, advising, and personal traits). Therefore, we submitted thestudents' responses to factor analysis2 thus extracting the underlyingdimensions of "effective instruction" as understood by the students.Table 1 shows that there are four factors underlying the attributes of"effective teaching" instead of three. These factors cover most of theareas investigated and explain approximately 39% of the total commonvariance.

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48 What Makes a Good Teacher ?

Table 1

FACTOR ANALYSIS MATRIX AFTER ORTHOGONAL ROTATIONSTRUCTURE AND CONTENT OF FACTORS •

FactorItems ••

1 Preparation of lecture —.4932 Ability to explain ideas clearly —.3853 The professor as researcher -5564 Proper apportioning of material —.3945 Convincing as authority in his field —.4396 Organization of lecture —.4697 Professor as researcher -4998 Professor as intellectual -400

9 Direct approach to student —.57910 Flexibility —.487 »1.1 Tolerance toward students —.36512 Liberal rqanner —.51613 Gives feedback —.45314 Develops independent thinking in student -46615 Motivates additional reading -55216 Allows students freedom of expression .61017 Evinces interest in the student —.55718 Motivation to learn .41519 Ability to condense and summarize —.35020 Develops students' capability -512

for original thinking21 Considerate toward student —.51122 Informal relationship whith student —.60323 Motivation to learn .58424 Encourages student —.388

• The analysis relates only to items with a loading of ±0.35.** Item content has been presented here rather than the actual items, resulting in

what only appears to be a repetition of items.

The four factors may be classified as : advising, methods of instruc-tion, contribution, and scholarship. "Advising", the strongest of the fourfactors, refers to those traits involving student-teacher interaction. Thisincludes providing feedback, willingness to encourage and help students,a direct approach, etc. These items have a high loading with the pro-fessor's personal characteristics such as a liberal manner, tolerance, andflexibility. This construction of this factor is similar to that of the in-teraction dimension discovered in Costin's study (1968). However, thetraifs which appeared in Costin's work as two separate factors, labeled

1 2 3 4

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M. Miron 49

as feedback and personality, appear here together. One possible expla-nation for the difference could be that Cos tin's study evaluated teachingassistants rather than regular instructors and it is quite likely that stu-dents expect different things from assistants than they do from theirprofessors.

Although a single factor, delivery, was posited, in fact, two distinctfactors including both method of instruction and educational objectivesshowed up. Factor Two, "methods of instruction", covers the manner ofinstruction and deals with the instructor in his capacity as a teacher.Factor Three, "contribution", measures the level of the instructor's con-tribution to the students' motivation and intellectual development. Thisfactor includes items such as stimulation of original thinking and moti-vating the students to do additional reading and further study in thefield. The distinction between these two factors is consistent with thefindings of Miron and Segal (1975), Sockloff and Papacostas (1975) andSegal (1975), but not with those of French (1957), Gadzella (1968) andMusella and Rusch (1968). In the latter studies, there was no distinctionbetween the procedural and the instructional content dimensions. Per-haps the different findings result from the fact that in the latter inves-tigations the actual teacher rather than an ideal one was described.

The fourth factor was "scholarship". This is the only factor whichtouches on the personal traits of the instructor as an academic figure.It describes him as a researcher, an intellectual, and a scholar. Most ofthe studies surveyed here had not considered the instructor's researchability as a criterion of excellence, except for those of Subkoviak (1974)and Segal (1975).

Items referring to the instructor's personal characteristics, not nec-essarily intellectual qualities, such as outward appearance, sense ofhumour and personal charm, were not included in the factorial structureat all. This contrasts with the findings of Coffman (1954) who found twopersonality factors: empathy — a sense of humour, personal charm, etc.and appearance — meticulousness and outward appearance. Miron andSegal (1975) had uncovered a personality factor which was related tooutward appearance and popularity rather than to intellectuality.

Differences among Students in Various Disciplines

Responses from students in various disciplines were also analyzedby factorial analysis according to group 3. Here the question arose whether(second-year) university students are influenced by the specific schoolor department in which they are studying, above and beyond the generalinfluence of the university, and if so, to what degree. This question isof particular relevance to the Israeli situation since professional speciali-zation begins at the B.A. or B.Sc. level.

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50 What Makes a Good Teacher ?

Table 2CONTENT OF FACTORS IN THE VARIOUS FACULTIES

Faculty -

Law

SocialScience

Medicine

LifeSciences

Humanities

l

Contribution:transmissionof knowledge,developmentof creativethinking

Contribution:motivation oflearning, de-velopment ofcreativethinking

Advising :encour-agement,feedback,flexibility,informality

Contribution:motivation oflearning, de-velopment ofcreativethinking

Advising :feedback,tolerance,consideration,informality

Factor2

PersonalTraits :appearance,grasp ofmaterial

Delivery :organization,integration ofmaterial

GeneralinstructionalFigure :appearance,researcher,knowledge-able

Delivery :organization,lesson plan-ning, pre-sentation

PersonalTraits :appearance,friendliness,acceptability

3

Advising :informality,feedback,interest,encourage-ment

PersonalTraits :appearance,sense ofhumour, wil-lingness tohelp

PersonalTraits :sense ofhumour, in-formality,tolerance

Advising :informality,feedback,willingnessto help

Delivery :organization,preparation,grasp of ma-terial, in-terest

4

Delivery :organization,planning oflessons,clear explana-tion, con-creteness

Advising :flexibility,tolerance.informality

Delivery * :planning oflesson, pre-sentation,developmentof thought

Contribution:motivation,developmentof thought

• In the medical school, items dealing with methods of Instruction and contributionappeared together.

Table Two4 shows a description of the factors obtained from thefactor analysis from five departments. Four factors appeared in most ofthe departments, generally including advising, delivery and personaltraits. Student response in life sciences only broke down into three fac-tors ; personal traits did not appear as an independent factor. Four

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M. Miron 51

content areas common to all the departmental areas are : delivery, advis-ing, contribution and personal traits. There is a degree of agreementamong the departments with respect to the content of the factors. Actualfactor composition varies, and some items allocated to one factor maybe allocated to a different factor in a different department.

Delivery

This factor was nearly identical in most of the disciplines. It de-scribes the individual as instructor, i.e., his/her method of instruction.Medical students, however, did not differentiate between this area andcontribution (see below). This reflects similar findings in the studies ofFrench {1957) and Gadzella (1968).

Advising

This factor covers the qualities of the interaction between aninstructor and his students. The items falling within this category appearin various combinations in all the disciplines.

Contribution

This factor applies to the objectives of instruction, i.e., the instruc-tor's "contribution" to the student in the cognitive domain of thinking,interest, originality, and motivation. In the medical school, as notedabove, this area is not an independent dimension.

In general, students in law, social science, and life science depart-ments had similar conceptions in terms of contribution. However, lawschool students tended to relate only to the cognitive aspect of the in-structor's contribution, while students in the social and life sciencesrelated to the motivational aspect as well.

Personal Traits

In most of the disciplines, this dimension included qualities suchas a pleasing appearance, a sense of humour, and friendliness; that seemsto indicate the students viewed the instructor as a human being, ratherthan strictly as an instructor. This reflects part of the findings of theMiron and Segal study (1975) ; a similar variation had been noted in theCrawford and Bradshaw study {1968).

However, medical students distinguished between those personaltraits not related to the instructional process and the instructor's aca-demic status. Thus they viewed the instructor not only as a humanbeing, but also as an intellectual, researcher and person of scholarlyauthority. One might conclude that the relationship between a medicalstudent and his instructor differs qualitatively from that of other stu-dents. The assumption that research ability and/or attainment would be

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52 What Makes a Good Teacher ?

central in the life sciences, medical school and to some extent in thesocial sciences, was not borne out except with the medical students. Theinstructor's ability to motivate his students to study, a quality associatedwith classroom interaction, received similar emphasis by all the students.

It was also assumed that students from the humanities, law, andperhaps social sciences would conceptualize similarly, and medical andlife science students would also share concerns and emphases. Thisassumption was based on similarities of orientation and the role of thescientific discipline within the different groups. Indeed, based upon theShapira and Etzioni study, one would have expected a similar conceptionof "effective teaching" among humanities, social science and life sciencestudents. Neither of these assumptions was supported by the findingsof this study.

Summary and Conclusions

Attributes of "effective teaching" fall into four distinct generalcategories, composed of different dimensional content.

1. Advising : the instructor's interaction with his students, flexibil-ity, tolerance, and willingness to help.

2. Method of instruction : organization, planning of lessons, givingclear explanations.

3. Contribution : the instructor's contribution to the student's in-tellectual development and motivation.

4. Scholarship : the desired status of the instructor as an intellec-tual and researcher.

These findings lead us to two important conclusions. First, in con-trast to students in other studies (French, 1957 ; Coffman, 1954 ; Gad-zella, 1968), Israeli university students distinguished between the teach-er's methods of instruction, the effectiveness of these methods, andother academic qualities when they measured the instructor's contribu-tion to their attaining educational objectives. .

Second, only those personal (non-academic) traits considered rele-vant to the process of instruction were rated highly by the Israeli stu-dents. This does not coincide with American students who defined thedesirable personality as including a sense of humour, personal charm,appearance, and other areas essentialy unrelated to the teaching role.Furthermore, characteristics (factors) of "effective teaching" clusteredsimilarly among students of various disciplines. In addition, dimensionalcontent overlapped from one group to another.

The question remains whether, and if so, to what degree, one cangeneralize from these findings and apply them to Israeli students ingeneral. The subjects of the present study were students in their secondyear of undergraduate study. In order to achieve firmly based results,

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M. Miron 53

it would be necessary to expand and diversify the sample : to investigateattitudes of graduate students and students in various other universitiesas well. It would also be essential to evaluate different methods of in-struction, such as frontal lectures, seminars, laboratory work, and smalldiscussion groups.

NOTES

1 Although "effective teaching" and an "effective teacher" are not identicalconcepts, they are so slosely intertwined that this article will deal with both ofthem.

2 The varimax criterion was used for rotation after it was discovered thatthe factors were not correlated with each other.

11 The comparison took into account the differences in population size in eachdepartment.

'• The factors were taken after varimax rotation. Items with a load of under±35 were eliminated from the analysis.

B I B L I O G R A P H Y

COFFMAN, W. E. Determining Student Concepts of Effective Teaching from their Ratingof Instructors. In : Journal or Educational Psychology, 45, 19S4, p. 277—286.

COSTIN, F. A Graduate Course in Teaching of Psychology : Description and Evaluation. In :Journal of Teaeher Education, 19, 1968, p. 425—132.

CRAWFORD, P. L. ; BRADSHAW, H. L. Perception of Characteristics of Effective UniversityTeachers. In : Journal of Educational and Psychological Measurement, 28, 1968,p. 1079—1085.

DRESSEL, P. L. Evaluation of the Environment : The Process and the Results of HigherEducation. In : A. KNOWLES (Ed.) : Handbook of College and University Adminis-tration — Academic, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1970.

DUNKIN, H. J. ; BIDDLE, B. J. The Study of Teaching. New York, Holt, Rinehart & Winston,1974.

EBLE, D. E. The Recognition and Evaluating of Teaching. Washington, D.C., AmericanAssociation of University Professors, 1971.

FRENCH, G. N. College Students' Concepts of Effective Teaching. In : Dissertation Abstracts,17, 1957, p. 1380—1381.

GADZELLA, B. M. College Student Views and Ratings of an Ideal Professor. In : Collegeand University, 44, 1968, p. 96—99.

GRUSH, J. E. ; COSTIN, F. The Student as Consumer of Teaching Process. In : AmericanEducational Research Journal, 12, 1975, p. 55—66.

MIRON, M. Evaluation of Teaching by the Learner : a Feedback to Improve Teaching. In :A. LEWY and D. NEVO (eds.) : Evaluation Roles in Education, London, Gordon andBreach, 1981.

MIRON, M. ; SEGAL, A. Students' Conception of a Good Lecturer. In : Megamot, 1, 1975,p. 119—126.

MOURER, O. H. Learning Theory and Behavior. New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1960.MUSELLA, D. ; RUSCH, R. Student Opinion on College Teaching. In : Improving College

and University Teaching, 16, 1968, p. 137—140.RYANS, D. G. Characteristics of Teachers. Washington, Council on Education, 1960.SEGAL, E. University Students' Perceptions of "Good Instructor". Unpublished M. A. thesis,

School ,of Education. Tel Aviv, The University, 1975.SHAPIRA, R. ; ETZIONI-HALEVI, H. Who is the Israeli Student ? Tel Aviv, Am Haoved,

1973.SOCKLOFF, A. L. ; PAPACOSTAS, A. C. Uniformity of Faculty Attitudes toward Effective

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SUBKOVIAK, M. J. The Ideal Professor. AERA Annual Meeting, Abstract of Papers andSymposiums. Chicago, Illinois, April 15—19, 1974.

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