Remembering Good Learning and Teaching: Results of a Large-Sample Survey

Abstract

This article presents data from 1,751 survey responses on how adults remember their share of very good teachers in K-12 education and their characteristics. Participants remembered most of their teachers as good or very good and typically just over 15 percent as bad or worse. Further, participants remembered their very good teacher as predominantly caring and supportive, with a strong knowledge of the subject content. A factor analysis describes that good teaching was consistently associated with what the learning sciences broadly define as growth” models and not with the “teaching as delivery” model. These results show that participants’ positive perspectives about educators are consistent with several surveys of public opinion about local public schools, but not public schools nationally. The factor analysis also shows that when respondents reflected on their own learning, their assessment of “what worked” differed from key principles orienting most accountability-based education policies promoted since the 1980s.