What the Best College Teachers Do

Is this book somewhat vague and light on how-to's? Yes, of course. Thank goodness. You can't survey everything from theater to calculus and expect to produce a how-to manual worth 5 minutes of your time. The two take-home points, and the big values, of the book are: 1. There is a general mode of learning that transcends disciplines. IT EXISTS. It's a single thing that comes in many, many varieties, but it's still one basic thing. And it's not a mystery or the lottery. The particular details that motivate students, and the skills and challenges they bring to the classroom, may change with the times, but people's basic cognitive (and, I would even say, spiritual) needs that are satisfied with real learning *do not change*. Halle-fricking-lujah. The target has stopped moving. 2. Therefore, there is a corresponding general model for effectively facilitating that learning. Unsurprisingly, good teaching is a path, a journey, that does not end. But, by repeatedly circling around to several basic pedagogical questions and concerns, the quality of your teaching will spiral upwards. It's a craft, and not just a skill like riding a bike. Through the various chapters, the author presents and discusses those general questions that you should concern yourself with to improve your craft. He compares and contrasts highly effective teachers with less effective teachers (and occasionally abysmal teachers) in terms of using vs. not using these general pedagogical principles, including copious specific examples from various disciplines. Methodologically, I like this book because: 1. It's basically a report of a study (formatted to be readable, interesting, and useful). It's not just some guy serving up opinion, soap-boxing, cherry-picking, or re-gifting the same pedagogical fruitcake that's been passed around for the last couple of decades. If you want to object on samples or bias or whatever, he gives you the info to make an informed objection. I think many of the critiques above respond to the book as if it was just another guy's opinion, but it's the results of a lengthy study. 2. It lays out the general framework for good teaching in terms of questions and principles - or, I would say, the principle of asking yourself a certain set of questions, repeatedly, for the rest of your teaching career. This enables you to exercise your expertise, creativity, and freedom of judgment as an instructor to do what works for you, your discipline, your students, and your institution. (I can't believe people object at the scarcity of how-to's in the book, given the scope implied by the title; do people just want to hand off the responsibility of thinking??) It also means that you only have to remember one set of guidelines no matter what kind of class you are asked to teach, now or in the future. What if you're a lab junkie and you get stuck with a freshman writing seminar (albeit in your field of science)? What if you co-teach a multidisciplinary seminar; are you content to only contribute to your portion of the class and hope someone else "knits it all together" for the students? You don't have to wing it. That's excellent. It enables us as instructors to do what we do best without demanding that we re-invent the teaching wheel every time we do something slightly different. Three cheers for principles. And yes, the author covers a lot of territory and ideas that are not new. But there's a lot of value in 1) having the principles and associated questions set down concretely, vs. letting them remain as nebulous, guilt-inducing ought-to's in the back of your mind, and 2) connecting the dots at the level of discipline-transcendent principles, and not just suggestions or rules of thumb. This allows you to have the confidence to just focus on a few things that are known to work vs. trying to implement a hodge-podge of nice ideas that other people claim you ought try. Because if you're not in education research yourself, who has time to do the research to produce these kinds of principles?

First off, a little info about myself:I teach physics and engineering at the pre-U and undergraduate level. I have consistently received good teaching ratings from colleagues and students alike, and I have even garnered an award for teaching in the first two years of my career. When I purchased this book, I thought it was a simple "cookbook" to highlight the best practices. To my pleasant surprise, it is not. It is extremely well written and organised, and deceptively easy to read as it is filled with anecdotes. However, it is jam packed with valuable advice/practices which require insight and experience to fully appreciate. The book nevertheless puts forth convincing arguments as to why each practice is worthy of your consideration. The book also challenged, motivated, and convinced me to think about my teaching in ways many books don't (with the exception of another equally wonderful but complementary book by Susan Ambrose: How Learning Works). All of my best practices (some discovered by accident, and most from students' feedback) are highlighted in this book. How I wished I had read this book before I started teaching, it would have saved me from much grief and frustration. More importantly, since this book distills the best practices from many great teachers, I find myself fulfilling only a fraction of what a great teacher should be. The good news is, teaching can be learned, if one is willing to. My understanding of what teaching and learning means has been greatly expanded, and my students are reaping the benefits even now. One final note: though this book contains the best practices, it only has scant references to studies on the best teaching and learning practices by leading educational psychologists (experts who know how our brains are wired to learn). Nevertheless, practices highlighted in this book reflect major conclusions reported in educational journals. As such, for in-depth understanding of why certain practices work at the cognitive and emotional level, I recommend you get the book by Susan Ambrose: How Learning Works, which summarizes the most important findings on learning by researchers. I find both books complement each other nicely. All the best in nurturing the next generation! EDIT: After reading through some of the negative comments from reviewers, I am compelled to reiterate the following: This book is deceptively easy to read, but is filled with practical, life changing advice. For example, a common problem in learning is what Bain termed the plug and chug learning. Students absorb info and regurgitate it during exams resulting in shallow learning (and many teachers are responsible for this). How do we overcome this problem? Bain condensed 7 extremely good methods to overcome this problem (applicable in small class settings or in lecture halls) -- on the last paragraph of pg. 41! Only a single paragraph! And you see this pattern repeated many times over. Therefore, please read with attention to details and get ready when the "gems" pop up. It took me 4 days to complete a single chapter because I had to constantly understand, review and, more importantly, reflect upon what I have read.

At first glance, Ken Bain’s "What the Best College Teachers Do" might appear to be concerned with teaching and assessment methods alone. After reading, perhaps a more apt title would be “What the Best College Teachers Desire.” This book captures the heart behind what teachers do to construct and encourage a student desire for deep-learning. Bain’s work is driven by a search for teachers who produce these deep-learners. A helpful tool for seasoned professors and novice practitioners alike, "What the Best College Teachers Do" draws on what the most effective college educators understand and do well inside and outside of the classroom. While Bain’s primary audience is professors from both research and liberal arts universities, he contends the book’s conclusions could also be of interest to students and their parents. This book raises questions about the practices and philosophies of highly successful teachers in varying fields. It should be noted that “success” is defined as something more than students’ acing departmental final examinations. Success in teaching students results in “sustained influence” in learning, even beyond the classroom (9). Bain’s background in higher education learning initiatives (founding multiple “teaching centers” at universities such as NYU, Northwestern, Vanderbilt, and Montclair; serving as Provost of the University of the District of Columbia; and currently serving as the President of the Best Teachers Institute) qualifies him for such a task as uncovering the best teaching practices and philosophies. Bain admits he, like most college and university professors, had no formal preparation for helping anyone else learn, thus suggesting the purpose this book serves in the academic community (181). This book is first and foremost a study of what it is outstanding teachers do really well. Bain divides his research into six major conclusions concerning teaching: knowledge and learning, preparation, expectations, method and practice, treatment of students, and evaluation or assessment. “The ideas here require careful and sophisticated thinking, deep professional learning, and often fundamental conceptual shifts” (15). A paradigm shift from transmission of information to transformation of the student learner is of utmost importance. In summarizing the book, Bain first centers on what the best teachers know and understand. The most outstanding teachers are without a doubt experts in their field. Their immense, while specific, knowledge helps to qualify them for the task of teaching and training. Of course, those teachers are also aware that “knowledge is constructed, not received” (26). It should be understood rather than merely absorbed. Bain suggests a student’s interest should be in a mastery of learning over failure avoidance. Bain then shifts his focus from what these teachers know and understand to how they prepare to teach. With a baker’s dozen worth of weighty questions, Bain advocates for engineering a natural critical learning environment that is student-centered. Discerning the abilities and skills of students, understanding the pre-established mental models they bring to the classroom, assessing the student’s difficulty of grasping material, and sustaining long-term student interest and thinking all play a role in creating this environment. “Highly effective teachers design better learning experiences for their students in part because they conceive of teaching as fostering learning” (67). Moving forward from knowledge and preparation, Bain discusses the expectations successful teachers place on their students. A combination of high standards and the assurance of authentic learning goals ring through as critical. Bain emphasizes the importance of intellectual and personal development of the student for meaningful learning. The best teachers in the study expected more from their students — that “more” is tied to critical thinking and acting rather than completion of mounds of meaningless coursework. Method and practice emerge in Bain’s argument for effective teaching, and once again touches on a natural critical learning environment. Bain makes a case for gaining and keeping the attention of students with something they care about, seeking academic commitment from students, and engaging students inside and outside of class with a diverse set of learning experiences. Particular methods are far less important here than directing and shaping the learning environment. Bain voices his concern for the treatment of students by promoting common decency, acknowledging that professors should conceive of themselves as “fellow students” (144). Lastly, proper evaluation and assessment conclude the research. Bain stresses student assessments should be used as an additional avenue for helping students learn and teaching assessments should be used as a way of promoting learning-based instruction that is student-focused. Bain states, “Excellent teachers develop their abilities through constant self-evaluation, reflection, and the willingness to change” (172). Together, these create a system of evaluation dependent upon how well evaluators know and understand human learning. Bain’s approach was thoroughly considered. Organizing parts of this research study as a kind of “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQ), each chapter informs the reader of different aspects of teaching and learning. This tool makes the book incredibly useful as a resource. While reading the book in its entirety generates a better understanding of the process, scope and reasoning for conclusions, returning later for study concerning specific topics of interest is made easier and more accessible. I appreciated the student-centeredness Bain presented in his work. As the primary beneficiaries in the classroom, teaching should reflect students’ learning potential. It is suggested the best teachers “displayed not power but an investment in the students” (139). Bain’s work, in some respects, enhances an understanding of learning that exhibits sustained change in students’ lives. I found the information on “mental models” brought into the classroom as a result of each student’s background and rearing in education to be very insightful. Framing teaching in a way that moves beyond encouraging students to absorb information and toward understanding the underlying structures deep-learning requires is by no means a revolutionary conclusion or suggestion, but does act as a good reminder for practice. Critiques offered for "What the Best College Teachers Do" focus on data and the research methods of gathering that data. Bain’s primary prerequisites for the study are appropriate in direction, but the question arises of the data’s measurability. “Ultimately, the judgment to include someone in the study was based on careful consideration of his or her learning objectives, success in helping students achieve those objectives, and ability to stimulate students to have highly positive attitudes toward their studies” (183). There was great breadth to this study. Because of that, the conclusions offered are cursory at times. While “careful consideration” is admirable, it is not completely objective or measurable. This is where the data and research meet experience and discernment. I commend Bain for his efforts in rationalizing his subjective research methods but still fall on the side of caution in exact implementation or replication of his conclusions. While some similarities in learning theory across fields can be assumed, all cannot. The universities and subjects surveyed surely do not represent a comprehensive view of the American university system. Only sixty-three professors and teachers were studied closely in the final rounds of research (all but twelve were exclusively from research universities [188]). This study is hardly meant to be exhaustive, but is still valuable for graduated growth toward teaching students to learn deeply. Bain’s book is absolutely worthwhile and recommended for any professor or college teacher who is seeking to generate deep-learning motivation in their students. In many ways, it can be customized to each reader’s needs or desires. At just shy of two-hundred pages, the book is easily read in one sitting and well divided for later reference. I believe Bain’s sentiment can best be summed up in his thoughts on the potential and purpose of learning: “Learning doesn’t just affect what you know; it can transform how you understand the nature of knowing” (42).

What the Best College Teachers Do (Bain, 2004) is a good read for teachers interested in deepening their understanding of the art and craft of their profession. The book provides an in-depth definition, through field study research, of the scholarship of teaching and learning. Bain's research goes to the heart of what legislators and college accreditors call "assessment" by documenting what "teachers do that truly makes a difference in students' lives, and what any teacher can do to improve" (blurb by Richard Light on back cover). The best performers in any field are the ones most likely looking for ways to improve, but Bain's method does include examples of poor techniques for comparison. Bain offers numerous examples of highly effective classroom assessment techniques. One idea he offers is the "small group analysis." "Someone goes into the class while the instructor leaves the room. The consultant divides the students into small groups or pairs and asks each team to spend six or seven minutes discussing three questions: In what ways has the instruction/instructor helped you learn in this course? Can you suggest some changes in the instruction/course that would better help you to learn? If the course/instruction has helped you learn, what is the nature of that learning? Each team receives the questions on paper and is encouraged to take notes of their discussions. After six or seven minutes, the consultant brings the groups back together and gets feedback from some of them while inviting others to share any major additions to or disagreements with what they heard from their colleagues. The whole process takes less than twenty minutes and allows the consultant both to clarify (to ask those questions that we have all wanted to pursue when we read students' comments) and to verify (to find out if there are any divisions in the ranks)" (p. 159). The book describes the results of scholarly and also intuitive modes of inquiry concerned with more effective teaching and learning for the teacher that wants to help create better learning. This book provides some research-based ideas about how college teachers can use experimentation, research, analysis, and reflection to deepen student learning. The book is short (178 pages minus appendix etc.) with a conversational style that makes it a quick read in spite of the wealth of information.

I teach a lot of people through work. From 1:1 sessions to large classes, I'm expected to deliver valuable training that focuses on learning the skills and learning them quickly. I've read a few other books and found them useful, but this one has really helped me reconsider my instructional design, instruction, and evaluation styles to ensure I'm delivering true value to my students. Some of them are highly motivated and excited; some of them can't wait to leave. I'm expected to To summarize the book - the bar none, most important, top dog skill a teacher needs to have is to be able to connect the students. Connect to the students themselves. Connect the students to the material. Connect the material to the students' real lives. If you can accomplish all of that, you'll have set them up for deeper learning. Pros: - Extremely thorough, well researched, and useful to the educator. - I particularly liked the use of synthesis of the best educators into some core factors. For example, the best educators frequently ask if they're helping the students. I've had teachers that didn't help, and some that made it a lot harder to learn. Taking these to heart, practicing, and doing them would help prevent that. - Educators can take what they will. It's not an implementation outline, it's best practices. The actual implementation is up to us. - The overall theme is about connection. The book covers many stellar ways to help make those connections - from simply meeting the students formally, to setting up formal connection methods that allow educators to understand exactly what their students are learning. Cons: - None to speak of. Some may quibble with the evaluation styles recommended, sure, but as an adult educator, the final buck stops with my students - and there's no grading to speak of. I highly recommend it to anyone who teaches, whether you're an elementary school teacher, a college professor, or an educator at work.

This is a sweet book that many will find interesting and even, at times, inspiring. It recounts some `best practices' utilized by top teachers. It acknowledges that there are no magic bullet solutions, that the process of teaching is complex and that as teachers we must be ever vigilant and ever open to change. It is broken down into 7 chapters, each of which asks a question, e.g., "How do top teachers prepare to teach?" "What do they expect of their students?" "How do they conduct class?" and so on. There are helpful ideas here and a few key ones: e.g. it is very important to not only understand your discipline but to also know the key controversies, historical issues, methodological conflicts, and so on within that discipline. The most important idea in the book: abandon `simple transmittal' ideas of teaching and strive, instead, to create a learning community. Make `student learning' the focus of the class. This is very interesting and, in some ways, cogent. Unfortunately, the book has very little to say about the current state of teaching, the current state of American universities and the administrative challenges to developing a student learning model that could also be evaluated. In my classes, e.g., there is a wide mix of students--students from different schools, students from different majors, students who are freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. I have students who are highly-motivated auditors, students who are taking the class because it fills a requirement, students who are taking the class because it fits their work schedule, students who couldn't enroll in the closed course that they really wanted to take, and so on. I have A students and I have occasional D students, students who are passionate about the material and students who are in college because they feel that they have to be there, in order to secure the kind of job that will enable them to have the things which they desire. At the same time, my state mandates the use of a particular teaching evaluation instrument in addition to my departmental evaluation instrument. Evaluations are utilized in assessing junior faculty for promotion, associate professors for promotion to full professor, post-tenure reviews and for all nominees for the multiple teaching awards available within the university and university system. We have, in short, committed ourselves to a number of things (easily-administered evaluation systems, `access', `diverse populations', `nontraditional students', etc.) that complicate the advice offered by Dr. Bain. We know, for example, that student evaluations are radically flawed. The numbers skew up in small, elective courses, skew down in large, required courses. They do not, by any stretch of the imagination, measure student learning. They encourage `consumerism'. On the other hand, the kind of apparatus which Dr. Bain envisions to actually measure student learning--looking closely at all course materials, sitting in on more than one or two classes, studying student papers and exams to measure the degree of their learning, and so on is simply not `administrable' given the size and complexity of the operation. Each of us can develop a sense of what our students have learned and that is very important; the focus on that learning is very important. Our evaluation systems, department- , college- and campus-wide, however, are very, very crude and they may actually hinder learning, in some important respects. They are, however, fully institutionalized. In the late 60's I taught at West Point. All students, by class, took the same courses; these courses were required; they all had 15 students per section; the students were `sectioned' by merit (i.e. prior performance). Each class was resectioned multiple times in the course of a semester (usually 3 times), so that each instructor knew the level of quality of a class, saw the final work from the previous sectioning period, and could actually assess whether or not the previous sectioning period's instructor had contributed to the student's learning or not. We had a floating instructor so that we were freed up to visit one another's classes on a regular basis. The institution was constantly visited by high school guidance counsellors, senior officers, etc., so that `class visitations' were an everyday occurrence and not disruptive. All of our classes were taught at the same time. In yearling (sophomore) comparative literature (more like `world literature' actually) the classes were all in the early afternoon, right after physical training, hot showers and many-caloried lunches, so that attention spans were more or less even across the 15 sections of the course. We also rotated the preparation of lesson plans for each block of instruction, so that each of us could see the kind of planning that the other instructors were capable of producing. Our rating officer (i.e. the boss) regularly examined papers that we had graded and evaluated our acuity and the quality of our comments. This is the only kind of structure in which evaluation of instruction can be conducted with anything approaching the kind of reliability that I would consider serious. Needless to say, there is nothing in civilian undergraduate education that is remotely like this in 2011. That does not mean that we cannot have superb teaching. My point is that we have already institutionalized a whole host of practices which need to be taken into account when we talk, seriously, about teaching. We begin with existing structures--the results of 40+ years of budgetary/policy decisions; then we can consider significant changes. These wider contexts are almost wholly ignored in Dr. Bain's book. To take but a single point: the vast majority of key (for me, language-centered) education in the regional public institution which most students attend is conducted by contingent faculty. These faculty survive or `fail' based on student evaluations. That fact results in educational practices, some, perhaps many, of which run counter to Dr. Bain's recommendations. I support Dr. Bain's recommendations, at least the great majority of them, but given the academic contexts which we have created they strike me as almost other-worldly.

This book was simply amazing and it really would serve best for new educators like myself. As others have commented, this isn't a step by step book, which Bain literally states in the book, but it is very useful in one specific way. It asks the questions and discusses topics and aspects about teaching that get you to self reflect and it leaves the decision up to you, as an educator, as to what direction you want to take your teaching in and how much or how little of what is discussed in the book you want to take with you. That is the most valuable thing that this book provides because it does not guilt you or judge you into thinking what is the good or bad way to teach. It simply tells what the results are, based on his research, and you decide how you palatalize it. You either like the taste of it or you do not and most of all, since we all have different personalities that fit different teaching approaches, we can fit what Bain says to our own teaching style and philosophy. I agreed with some things and disagreed with others but overall, I truly appreciated the mental challenge that this book introduces by challenging me to think about my way of thinking about students. The rest is truly up to me. Most importantly, he gave me something that I did not get in grad school, a sense of direction about my teaching.

Ken Bain currently directs the Center for Teaching Excellence at New York University, so he knows what he's talking about. His study of the best teachers and what they do took more than a decade to put together and resulted in several conclusions which are helpfully stated at the beginning of this book: the best teachers, not surprisingly, know their own fields extremely well and think long and hard about how to convey that knowledge. The best teachers don't just teach facts, they teach students how to think. The best teachers respect their students and assume everyone can learn, and they constantly assess and evaluate their own efforts as well as those of their students. It was enjoyable for me to peruse this volume and compare my own teaching to the models described therein: to nod in agreement when the they matched what I did, to think about improving or modifying my approaches when they did not. After finishing it I can't say I slavishly agree with all of Bain's conclusions or admonitions--I still believe that in my field a certain level of basic technical mastery is essential for further achievement. (And there's nothing wrong that I can see with requiring students to meet deadlines.) However, Bain's work has motivated me to strive to improve how I impart that mastery, and caused me to re-examine "truths" that I thought were self-evident. It's my guess that such soul-searching is what this volume was meant to evoke. I also suggest reading Patrick Allitt's "I'm the Teacher, You're the Student" for an interesting and rather different perspective on teaching in higher education.

A must read, with tons of valuable practice suggestions for those leading adult classrooms!

arrived on time and as described. could not ask for more.

good

Great research in very digestible form. My copy is full of post-it notes marking valuable kernels of wisdom from very experienced and skillful masters. Bain tries to provide information that is not discipline specific but rather best practices that can be used regardless of subject. Every college teacher should read this.

If you teach in HE this is a gripping read. Nice style, sound conclusions IMHO as a National Teaching Fellow