Public beliefs about good teaching

Abstract

In this article, we describe public beliefs about the pedagogical approaches of very good teachers. Using an online survey of 334 adult participants and conducting an exploratory factor analysis, an analysis of variance, and multiple regression analysis, along with descriptive statistics, we found that participants believed that very good teachers embraced predominantly caring and supportive pedagogical approaches and had strong subject matter knowledge. Further, they estimated that more than two-thirds of their teachers were good or very good teachers, and only 12% were bad or very bad. The best predictor for the level of agreement with the pedagogical approach that focused on relationship as opposed to delivery of the content was the proportion of very good teachers remembered by participants. Participants’ beliefs did not vary significantly across gender, race, and political orientation.