Customer Reviews
An Amazing Book 
2008-06-27
This book is excellent for all teachers, in grades K-12, not just college teachers. It gets at the essential elements of great teaching and teachers. I have given it to many of the teachers at my school.
WHAT THE BEST COLLEGE TEACHERS SHOULD READ 2008-05-12
If you are a seasoned educator looking to improve your classroom performance and get greater academic results from your students, this book is for you. If you are a new teacher who would like to get on the right track to teaching success - without having to endure the painful learning curve that most teachers go through, this book is for you.
The book's author, Ken Bain, set out with the objective of capturing the collective scholarship of some of the most outstanding teachers in the United States with surveys and interviews that helped him document what they do, and how they think in an effort to conceptualize their practices. He defines "outstanding" teachers as those teachers who have achieved remarkable success in helping their students think, act and feel.
The conclusion of the book is directed to people who teach, but will benefit students and their parents as well. "What The Best College Teachers Do" should be required reading for all teachers (young/old or new/seasoned) who not only want to get better, but to become outstanding in their field.
Teaching is harder than it looks. 2007-11-13
Brief Summary: Ken Bain and his colleagues conducted a fifteen-year study of outstanding teachers from a variety of disciplines at two dozen institutions. The teachers they chose to study had all achieved remarkable success in helping their students make sustained, substantial and positive changes in the way they think, act and learn. The study looked at how good teachers prepare, what they expect from their students, how they conduct a class, how they treat their students, how they evaluate their students and themselves, and how they understand how students learn, and then play to those strengths.
There were several recurring practices and beliefs that seemed to be shared by the best teachers. They are looking to foster deep and lasting learning, rather than a kind of surface learning in which students remember something just long enough to pass the exam. They are learners themselves, constantly trying to improve their technique. They provide a safe environment which allows students to struggle and question new ideas. They plan their course backwards, beginning with the results they hope to achieve. They provide their students with clear and realistic goals. When their students have difficulty, they look for problems with their course rather than with their students. They make their classes as relevant as possible. Most importantly, good teachers seem to share the belief that teaching only occurs when learning takes place.
Sample Excerpt :Understanding that every student is an individual, the best teachers know that no single approach can work for all of them. As one teacher in the study said, "You don't teach a class. You teach a student." Bain further explains, "Simply put, the best teachers believe that learning involves both personal and intellectual development and that neither the ability to think nor the qualities of being a mature human being are immutable. People can change, and those changes - not just the accumulation of information - represent true learning. More than anything else this central set of beliefs distinguishes the most effective teachers from many of their colleagues."
Primary Strength: If a person was lucky, she might have five outstanding teachers in her lifetime who she would strive to emulate. Yet when I try to put my finger on the "what" and the "how" of what my outstanding teachers did, those qualities are elusive. But when I read this book, those great teachers of mine came to mind and I found myself thinking, "Yeah, they did that." Bain has taken on the herculean task of studying hundreds of successful teachers and then finding their common denominator, thus allowing each of us to study what the masters have in common and incorporating those skills into our own personal style.
Primary Weakness: Bain was vague about the "science" of his study. Some might like to know more about the source of his facts, how many teachers were studied where, and exactly how the studies were conducted.
Overall: Before I read this book, I knew that teaching was difficult. After reading this book, I realize that if you do it well, teaching is far more complicated than I ever imagined. It's like a juggling act with thoughts and minds, and you have to adapt your routine for every class. It confirms what I have always known: Not everyone can teach. It's not enough to know your subject cold, or to have the greatest lesson plan, or even to use the best techniques. You have to love the job. You have to respect your students and have faith that they want to learn, and they can learn. Because if you don't believe all of that, for even one day, they will know it. Your students will know it, and they will suffer.
Nothing substantial 
2007-09-18
This book was completely unhelpful. It is filled with inspiring anecdotes of "what the best college teachers do" that illustrate some inspiring and earth-shaking revelations such as "treat your students like human beings" and "don't lecture for 2 hours at a time." All of his advice is abstract with few practical applications, and the rest is common-sense knowledge. Do not buy this book.
a teacher's comments 
2007-08-08
Excellent; makes one realize much of what passes for learning in college classrooms is little more than memorization and even that fades quickly. It would be 5-star except it doesn't always explain How these college professors implement their concepts of better teaching.
Excellent book for college instructors 2007-06-27
What makes a great teacher great? Who are the professors students remember long after graduation? This book, the conclusion of a fifteen-year study of nearly one hundred college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities, offers valuable answers for all educators.
The short answer is--it's not what teachers do, it's what they understand. Lesson plans and lecture notes matter less than the special way teachers comprehend the subject and value human learning. Whether historians or physicists, in El Paso or St. Paul, the best teachers know their subjects inside and out--but they also know how to engage and challenge students and to provoke impassioned responses. Most of all, they believe two things fervently: that teaching matters and that students can learn.
In stories both humorous and touching, Bain describes examples of ingenuity and compassion, of students' discoveries of new ideas and the depth of their own potential. What the Best College Teachers Do is a treasure trove of insight and inspiration for first-year teachers and seasoned educators.
(20040315)
good book 2006-11-11
Interesting book; it gives useful insights in how to teach.
Low information density though, it could have been more focused.
Nevertheless, it's easy to read and informative in general.
What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain 
2006-09-15
This book had some good insight. The emphasis on creating a community conducive to learning, while not novel, is important. I think, or at least hope, that the author was well-intended. However, most of the ideas were jumbled, inconsistent and presented in a highly condescending manner. The most annoying approach was creating a straw man, followed by destroying the straw man, and concluding with some statement to the tune of "now thay we've shown ...." Of course all Bain has shown is that some idea that most thoughtful instructors never considered a possibility is actually ... not a possibility. Often he would, later in the text, argue that he's proven something about good or bad instructors. As an example, in Chapter 4, "Recall that we found [in chapter 2] many less successful instructors who think of memory as a storage unit and intelligence as the capacity to use the information in that tank." Realistically, I suspect that most instructors are a lilttle bit more thoughtful about what constitutes intelligence. I found his shallow dualistic view of education demeaning to the intelligence of instructors and students.
Useful, sigh 2006-09-10
If I had to summarize this book in two words, they would be "only connect" (E.M. Forster). Bain advises college teachers to orient their teaching to the students in the room. We--and I say we because I am one--need to know what presuppositions students bring to the class; we need to keep students' attention by connecting the new to the familiar; we need to turn students into learners and thinkers, instead of cramming facts into their heads. Etc. etc.
All this sound like common sense, but in fact it goes against the standard orientation of college teachers. The usual thing is to think first about the subject of the course, about which the teacher is presumably an expert. The subject, and the teacher's deep knowledge of it, steers lectures and exams. The problem is that this can put students to sleep and leave them with an acquaintance with the subject that fades soon after the final exam.
I'm glad I bought this book, I recommend it, and I think it's going to make my own teaching better. All that being said, here are some more negative reactions. What if everything Bain says is actually true? What would that say about the American college student? His advice makes the student sound like a fragile creature who's got to be seduced into an interest in anything outside of himself.
For example, Bain says professors shouldn't use the word "requirements" on the syllabus. They should promise students specific valuable things, but never demand. In fact, he seems to say that the exact way grades are computed shouldn't be stated. What would happen if there were clear and straightforward demands? Would students crumble?
The huge emphasis Bain puts on connecting course material to a student's personal concerns makes me wonder what would happen if a professor got up and talked about... the civil war ...computers ...botany. Can't teachers count on the inherent interest of anything?
The advice in the book frequently ignores real world teaching problems. Bain is very positive about take home exams, thinking it's silly to pass up their advantages because of worries about cheating. But these worries are serious.
He's very positive about the idea that every exam should be cumulative, with only the last one counting. A student should be able to miss an exam with impunity. They probably had some good reason. Hmm. In the best of all possible worlds, yes. My students wouldn't come to the exams that didn't count.
Be tolerant of late work, he says; there was probably a good reason. That's not my experience. Students need firm deadlines or some of them will never do any work.
It puzzles me that Bain's best teachers do things in their classrooms that really would be unworkable in mine. There's nothing in the book that addresses this disconnect.
"In an ideal world..." 
2006-07-30
As a former college professor who does some online teaching from time to time, I was fascinated by Bain's book. Bain identified a number of teachers who made a meaningful impact on student lives. He and his team followed up to ask, "What makes them so great?"
And he has answers. Anyone who's been teaching awhile will not be surprised. Ask questions. Get students involved. Don't just tell -- teach students how to learn. And so on.
But, as other reviewers have noted. Bain's "best" professors appear to dwell among the Olympians of higher education. We don't have a complete list of the "best," but we get references to Harvard and Vanderbilt.
In the real world, the vast majority of today's students enter large state institutions. They begin with large lecture classes. It *is* possible to personalize those classes to some extent but you certainly don't have room for discussion.
Additionally, most students juggle work, family and social pressures along with school. Many spend more time watching television than studying. A friend who won a major teaching award told me, "I don't make students do the reading. I know they won't."
Bain also ignores institutional pressures on faculty. When I taught online for a well-respected university, I was told, "You're expected to give at least a couple of C's and F's in every class."
OK, I said, then we should be fair: we need to let them know there's a forced curve, as Harvard does. No dice. And in this particular class, most students were majors who worked full-time. Their assignments were linked to their jobs. All were motivated to work hard. As Bain says, high grades can also reflect high learning -- but just try and prove it.
I've also been in environments where students were expected to get A's -- a B-plus was the closest to a failing grade. Students who genuinely wanted to learn were frustrated by whiny, do-nothing classmates who could hardly provide a stimulating classroom conducive to learning.
Most important Bain dismisses evaluations. but in reality, nearly every professor will live or die by student opinion. And great teaching does not always lead to top evaluations. I once heard a talk about an experimental astronomy class, where students engaged in participatory exercises throughout the term. They performed better on tests and appeared to learn far more thoroughly. Yet evaluations were lower than those of conventional classes. Unless the professor has some protection (and even tenured profs can get penalized for weak reports), you can bet he'll go back to the tried and true methods next time.
I had a similar experience myself, while teaching in a large state university. I would overhear students say, "I've never participated as much as I have in your class." One group of students even organized a little party for our class -- and they were commuters. We had a great community and students learned a lot. But the course evaluations had no place to describe these experiences. Students told me openly, "I base my evaluations on the grade I get."
If you're going to read this book, I'd also recommend Rebekah Nathan's Freshman Year. Nathan, the professor who went undercover to learn how students really live, identifies some reasons students continue to be demotivated. For example, Bain notes that an attitude of "Everyone is right" comes at a stage of learning development. But Nathan shows us orientation exercises where everyone shares an opinion -- no judgment, no synthesis, no analysis.
A professor can get lots of good ideas from reading Bain's book. Putting those ideas into practice -- well, that's another book.
What would be far more useful would be a serious study on learning. In Chapter 2, Bain cites studies showing that students don't change beliefs readily. I think he's right. A college sophomore who was studying psychology told me, "I don't like what we're learning. Depression isn't real. I was brought up to think about those who are worse off than I am -- and then I won't be depressed anymore."
Will this student's belief be changed by the "best" teaching? Does she belong in a university at all? These questions should haunt us as we study the real issues of higher education.
