What is a good teaching ?

What is Good Teaching?
We teachers can only help the work going on, as servants wait upon a master.
— Maria Montessori

Consequently, a good teacher may be said to help learners develop their mental capacity to produce new knowledge through their own investigation and critically evaluate what they have produced. But how will a teacher accomplish such a task? In this age of information technology, lectures can be videotaped, downloaded on demand through computers and made easily available to students, along with the lecture transcripts, additional explanatory notes, and other readings. If so, do students need to attend lectures and tutorials? In fact, are university lecturers necessary?

However, unlike a video-tape,

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a teacher can answer your individual questions.
If you haven't understood something, you can ask a teacher to explain again. A good teacher enables students to seek clarification during class and through channels such as email and notes in the mail box.
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a teacher asks questions and directs students' thinking.
A good teacher often asks questions in class to find out what students already know, so that he or she can pitch the discussion at the right level. The teacher's questions will also encourage students to think through problems.
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a teacher invites students to challenge him/her.
Stimulated by students who contest what they are taught, a good teacher encourages students to challenge him/her, so that both teacher and students learn from the exchange.
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a teacher facilitates group discussions among students in class.
A good teacher often promotes group activities for students to learn through the exchange of views.

It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge.
— Albert Einstein

Thus a teacher-in-person engages in a form of teaching that allows students to interact with one another and with the teacher, cultivates students' thinking abilities, and thereby promotes independent learning. By empowering students to learn on their own, good teachers make themselves redundant as quickly as possible. By arousing students' intellectual curiosity and openness of mind and making learning exciting and pleasurable, they thereby prompt life-long learning.

However, no single teacher is likely to be equally strong in all of these characteristics of a good teacher. Some teachers excel in enhancing critical thinking, others communicate complex ideas well in clear and simple ways, and yet others are exceptional in making learning a joy. Therefore, the greater the number of desirable qualities and the greater the strength of each of them, the better the quality of teaching.

Adapted : http://www.cdtl.nus.edu.sg/ufm/orient/226_c.htm