When is Teaching Effective? Understanding Teachers’ Beliefs about Effective Teaching

This study presents a qualitative analysis of teachers’ beliefs about effective teaching from the responses to an open-ended question by seventy-five teachers in the basic education and tertiary levels. From the written narrative statements of the participants, domains were developed, abstracted, and clustered into themes. Then, cross analysis and internal auditing were done. The study revealed four themes that mostly characterize effective teaching, namely students’ learning behavior, teachers’ professional competence, nature of teaching, and teachers’ personal qualities. Teachers’ beliefs are predominantly learner-centered. This finding was validated through focus group discussions and interviews among the teachers. Results of this investigation point to the need of examining whether teachers’ beliefs in effective teaching are consistent with their teaching practice. Future research directions may take the form of development of scales or measures of effective teaching based on the prevailing themes that emerged in this study.

 

Keywords - teachers’ beliefs, effective teaching, active engagement