What Does It Mean To Be A Good Teacher?
In life we have all been students and we have had to deal with many teachers and professors. Only some of them, however, have left their mark because they have distinguished themselves for their teaching skills. But what does it mean to be a good teacher? What makes it so? For some time educational psychologists have been trying to answer this question and today we want to present the conclusions they have reached.
Before discovering the qualities of a good teacher, it is necessary to remember that it is one of the most complex professions. Educational and didactic processes require intelligence and precision, the simple fact of knowing them and knowing how to manage them is already a rather difficult task. And a teacher must not only deal with this, he must also know how to deal with pupils taking into account their individual peculiarities.
Qualities to be a good teacher
Studies have shown that educational quality increases when a teacher meets the following requirements:
Expertise in the matter
It is essential that a teacher be prepared in his subject. Obviously, this knowledge goes beyond knowing terms, facts and concepts. He must also know how to organize and connect ideas and be able to argue all aspects of the subject, extracting information from other areas as well.
Teaching strategies
For effective teaching, the right strategies must be adopted. Today it seems that the best are those of a constructivist nature: the pupil is seen as a theorist who has to build his world, so the most suitable educational strategy is to push him to explore, discover new knowledge and develop critical thinking.
Didactic planning of objectives
Good teachers don’t improvise the lesson. They set teaching goals and plan how to achieve them. Good planning takes a lot of time and work, but it turns learning into a challenge and an interesting activity for pupils.
Knowledge of the stages of development
As children grow, the way they learn and cope with difficulties change. A good teacher, therefore, must know the different stages of childhood development in order to give students materials and instructions according to their level.
Class control skills
An important characteristic of a good teacher is to consider the class as a whole and to plan the activities by organizing them into group work. Therefore, he must possess a series of skills: knowing how to give rules, organize groups, supervise activities, contain behaviors deemed wrong, etc.
A discipline that is too rigid or, on the contrary, too much permissiveness, risks having negative consequences: we need to achieve a democratic and cohesive atmosphere.
Ability to instill motivation
If students do not have the right motivation, the quality of learning will suffer. For this, it is important that the teacher arouse interest in his subject. In this sense, it will have to transform the didactic activity into a creative and stimulating activity to improve the educational quality.
Communication skills
Teaching means being involved in debates and confrontations, so speaking art is a necessary trait. A good professor has no problem adapting his level of expression to the peculiarities of the receptor. We are talking about a type of communication that does not concern only the students, but the whole school community.
Recognition of the individual characteristics of pupils
No student is the same as the others, everyone has their own qualities and learning profile. Being a good teacher means knowing how to recognize these individual differences.
It also means knowing how to personalize the teaching activity based on the pupils’ learning methods.
Effective work in different cultural situations
Nowadays, following globalization, it is normal for a classroom to host students from different cultures. Therefore, among the skills required of a good teacher there is also the knowledge of the cultural peculiarities of his pupils, so as to encourage interaction and guarantee the success of education.
The role of the teacher is to invite pupils to relate to each other in a positive way to avoid cultural stigmatizations.
Evaluation skills
A good teacher is aware of the learning level of each pupil. Therefore, he must know how to use the assessment tools adequately, taking into account the strengths and weaknesses of the students.
Current evaluation is a system of assessment, verification, and it shouldn’t be like that. The function of the evaluation should be to recognize the scholastic skills of a pupil to guide him in his educational path.
IT and technological skills
When used correctly, technological resources significantly increase educational quality. For this reason, good teachers are in step with the new technologies used in teaching.
They must also teach pupils to familiarize themselves with these tools by defining their times and uses.
Conclusions
Now that you know the characteristics that a good teacher should have, you will have realized that they are not few. It seems almost impossible for a single person to be able to bring all these requirements together. Being a teacher means doing a job of great responsibility and you cannot afford not to be up to it.
The teacher is a figure of central importance in the development of education and the education of pupils. A bad or mediocre teacher could prevent students from developing their full potential.
On the other hand, if we want quality teachers and professors, we also need quality training. Of course, attitude is important, but so are the knowledge and skills acquired, so investing in education is among the best choices we can make for the future of our society.
