What the Best College Teachers Do

Bain’s teaching philosophy emphasizes deep learning over strategic learning, rote memorization, and regurgitation of facts. A natural critical learning environment that centers research questions is key to fostering deep learning. This learning fosters understanding and skills that students can employ beyond the classroom.

Bain defines effective instructors (or “the best teachers”) as possessing several significant qualities. First, they have a record of fostering deep learning among their students. Second, they engage in active learning practices that support a naturally critical learning environment that is student-centered. They often structure their classes around a central project that allows students to investigate intriguing questions or issues. They foster a sense of community in their classes, treat their students with respect, engender trust, and support a safe learning environment. Their students are allowed to try and fail under the guidance of a compassionate mentor who centers the intrinsic reward of learning rather than doling out judgment via grades. They are lifelong learners themselves who are educated beyond their disciplinary boundaries, consistently reflect on their pedagogy, and study their failures so they can improve.

Intrinsic motivators encourage commitment and persistence in education. They contrast with extrinsic rewards, like grades, which inspire momentary motivation. Bain argues that a systemic focus on grades, often generated by a few examinations, hinders deep learning. Instead, grades encourage rote and strategic learning. Students memorize information to repeat it on examinations rather than understanding the meaning and significance of what they are studying. Moreover, their knowledge fades after they complete the assignment and after a course ends. Alternatively, students enrolled in courses that promote the intrinsic reward of deep learning achieve better learning outcomes and sustained understanding. Bain suggests educators are more likely to intrinsically motivate learners when they center intriguing questions or issues and build their courses around projects in which students are invested.

The Socratic Method is a teaching technique that originated in classical Greece. Instructors pose questions to their students that encourage discussion and debate, thus encouraging critical thinking. The teacher does not give the students the correct answer but mentors them through the learning process in which they investigate a question or problem. Many of Bain’s subjects used this method to create a naturally critical learning environment in their classes and inspire deep learning.

Bain suggests that effective educators acknowledge that some students face barriers to success and create equitable educational environments and experiences. Some students, for example, cope with stereotype threat, a psychological concept that refers to an individual’s fear of inadvertently fulfilling negative stereotypes about one’s identity, including gender, race, and ethnicity, disability, etc. Bain explains that this anxiety contributes to underrepresented students, even those who are well-prepared, failing to meet learning objectives. Educators should, therefore, create many opportunities for students to learn in a diversity of ways and receive regular feedback. This learning should occur within a safe critical learning environment with established trust between learners and teachers.