Recognizing that teaching is both art and science, I advance this list of dimensions of excellence as a starting point for discussions about the performances we as teachers strive for and may help each other obtain. While the skills of teaching are widely researched and described, they are rarely rewarded, mostly, I think, because we don't share this common language about best practices. Instead of directly addressing learning to teach well, we often erroneously assume new teachers know how to teach because they used to be students.

Becoming an excellent college teacher is a continuing life-long professional challenge, the dimensions of which often go unrecognized. In the general mind, doctors and lawyers are professionals, teachers are not. I believe we could change our semi-professional status if we could agree upon a list of Best Practices such as this one and help each other achieve them. It would help us achieve three goals:

• college teachers could find consensus on an ever-evolving definition of what constitutes best practices in this amorphous and complex endeavor,
• senior faculty could assume a responsibility to develop additions and modifications to the best practices list and actively transmit those practices to new faculty, and
• we all could ensure that our colleagues and institutions apply the set of best practices for the ultimate welfare of the learners.

If faculty could ever come to agree upon upon a performance list such as this one, our institutions could marshall the resources to accelerate its attainment, clarify the objectives for acquiring tenure, and offer salary rewards for an individual's continued reflective review of teaching practice.

The Best Practices chosen here focus on those aspects of classroom teaching competence that are visible to oneself and to others and thus become useful for formative evaluation. When components of excellence can be defined in language that details teaching actions that are confirmable performances, that is, neither minutely technical nor remotely abstract, we could investigate those actions in practice, either collboratively or individually. For if a component can be self-perceived near the time it occurs, it can be modified or strengthened. That's how professionals, who must engage themselves in reflective practice, get better.

In this spirit I offer a list of what I have struggled to learn to do in my 20+ years of college teaching about teaching. Even though classrooms vary in content and goals, I believe this core set of Best Practices does apply to most adult education environments, in both vocational and academic areas, albeit in differing degrees. It is my attempt to specify which of the myriad things and relations in teaching deserve close study. I have endeavored to learn to do each of these things in my college teaching. Have your colleagues? Have you?

I have organized them under twelve headings. (When I have used them for tenure qualification, the candidate was required to set an objective under each goal area.)

1. Lecture Practices
2. Group Discussion Triggers
3. Thoughtful Questions
4. Reflective Responses to Learner Contributions
5. Rewarding Learner Participation
6. Active Learning Strategies
7. Cooperative Group Assignments
8. Goals to Grades Connections
9. Modeling
10. Double Loop Feedback
11. Climate Setting
12. Fostering Learner Self-Responsibility

Lecture/Rhetorical Questioning (1)
Talk in 7 to 10 minute segments, pause, ask pre-planned rhetorical questions; learners record their answers in their notes.

Surveys with Exemplifier (2)
Pause, ask directly for a show of hands: 'Raise your hand if you agree... disagree... etc.' or 'Raise your hand if you have encountered an example of that.' Ask for a volunteer to speak for the response group whose hands are raised.

Turn To Your Partner And... (3)
Pause, ask each to turn to the person next to them and share examples of the point just made or complete a given phrase or sentence.

Halting Time (4)
Present complex material or directions and then stop so learners have time to think or carry out directions. Visually check to see whether the class appears to understand. If they do, continue.

Explication de Texte (5)
By reading and analyzing passages from the text aloud, learners can see higher-order thinking skills and that 'criticism' is a participatory intellectual exercise.

Guided Lecture (6)
Students listen to 15-20 minutes of lecture without taking notes. At the end, they spend five minutes recording all they can recall. The next step involves learners in small discussion groups reconstructing the lecture conceptually with supporting data, preparing complete lecture notes, using the instructor to resolve questions that arise.

Immediate Mastery Quiz (7)
When a regular immediate mastery test is included in the last few minutes of the period, learners retain almost twice as much material, both factual and conceptual.

Story Telling (8)
Stories, metaphor, and myth catch people deeply within, so no longer are listeners functioning as tape recorders subject to the above information overload limits. What human beings have in common is revealed in myth; stories allow the listener to seek an experience of being alive in them and find clues to answers within themselves. The 10 to 20 minute limit no longer applies.

Short Readings
Brief assignments to read in class (especially effective are contrasting viewpoints).

First Person Experience
Works written in a personal voice, autobiographies, biographies, oral histories, diaries, and memoirs, when used as counterpoints to abstract texts, bridge the gap between their own lives and the content under study. Students more readily take part in discussions when they can personally relate to the material.

Individual Task With Review
Problems to solve that apply the concepts presented. Students complete a worksheet or other task and compare the results with their neighbors before the whole class discusses the answers.

Self-assessment Questionaires
Short surveys of learner attitudes and values.

Total Group Response: Human Graph (9)
Learners literally take a stand on an imaginary graph or continuum. The first few volunteers justify their choice of position, then the remainder of the class joins them without comment.

Case Studies (10) (11)
A case study is the factual account of human experience centered in a problem or issue faced by a person, group or organization. It can raise a variety of complex issues and stimulate discussions of alternative viewpoints. Typically, case studies are written objectively and include a brief overview of the situation, its context, and the major decisions that must be made. Rather than expecting learners to have a right answer, learners develop their ability to articulate their thoughts, frame problems, generate solutions, and evolve principles that may apply to other situations.

Visual Studies
Seeing first hand creates a common ground. Photographic essays, video programs, and personally made video recordings are examples of ways to bring into the classroom direct depictions of the concepts being discussed.

Role Play
Learners explore human relations problems by enacting problem situations and then discussing the enactments. Together learners can explore feelings, attitudes, values, and problem solving strategies. It attempts to help individuals find personal meaning within their social world and resolve personal dilemmas with the assistance of the social group.

Discoverable Tutorial Questions
These eleven question formulations meet the criteria of being both perceptually based and discoverable. The responses to these questions lie in the shared experience of the teacher and the learner (presently or shared past), so all learners, who may not at first answer acceptably, can be led back to available evidence to find adequate answers.

• Description:
  What did you see? What happened? What is the difference between.....?
• Reflection:
  What was interesting? What was surprising?
• Analogy:
  What else does it remind you of? What else does it look like?
• Common Purpose:
  What is the purpose of.....? What is the usual function of.....?
• Procedures:
  How does one normally do......? How was this done? What is the normal (non creative) next step?
• Possibilities:
  What else could .....? How could we......? If we didn't have, or couldn't use, ......, what could........?
• Prediction:
  What will happen next? What will you see? What will be the effect?
• Justification:
  How can you tell? What evidence led you to.....?
• Theorizing:
  Why is it that way? What is the reason for it?
• Generalization:
  What is the same about ....... and ......? What could you generalize from these events? What principle is operating?
• Definition:
  What does ...... mean? Define the word ...........

Wait Time (12)
After posing one of these tutorials, learners need at least 5 seconds in order to process it and begin the formulation of an answer.

Paraphrase
While remaining alert to both the intellectual and emotional aspects of learner contributions, rephrase the underlying message the learner is sending in one's own words, not the learner's words. This especially applies when the learner says something new, something more than the commonplace. Avoid 'parroting' the learners words or routinely beginning, 'I hear you saying.....' Both are irritating and condescending. Example: Student says, 'I am confused. I still don't know what you want from me.' Paraphrase: 'You see no way to start, huh?'

Parallel Personal Comment
Without changing the topic or bending it in the slightest, talk about one's own current feelings or a past experience that matches exactly what the learner has said. The intention is to convey parallel aspects of yourself that validate the other's perspective or confirm your understanding of what the other is talking about. Usually statements start with 'I....' 'I was confused about that myself when I first read it.' 'I want to hear more about that.'

Leading Query On Learner's Topic
Ask for clarification of aspects of the comment. Dig deeper into the student without bending or shifting it away to one's own agenda. Such responses include, 'Where does it break down?' 'Could you elaborate or give an example?' and references to others, 'Who can build on what she is saying?'

The best rewards are not contrived, foster personal reflection and independence, and actually work, that is, learners maintain new abilities or do better. Effective teachers support emerging initiative, cooperation and perseverance with well-timed positives in these forms:

Avoid Praise (13)
Praise, the expression of judgement, is less successful in rewarding learner performance than the techniques listed below. It tends to foster approval seeking rather than independence.

• 'I like how complete this is.' (implies pleasing me is important)
• 'Good question.' (implies some other learner's questions are not good)
• 'That's a great welding job.' (implies a learner should seek the teacher's approval versus 'a correct weld,' which is feedback, not praise)

Description
Describe objectively those aspects of learner performance needing support. To avoid making a personal evaluation, state a culturally accepted conclusion a group of dispassionate observers would concede:

• 'You have addressed each item.'
• 'That question is probably shared by many here today.'
• 'That weld is just like the book.'

Narration
Detail the action a learner takes immediately as it occurs. Narrations usually begin with 'You ......'

• 'You're raising an issue that needs discussion.'
• 'You're obviously trying to fit the pieces together.'
• 'You remembered the first step.'

Self-Talk
Talk about your own thoughts or prior personal experience.

• 'I have wondered that, too.'
• 'Questions like that have always intrigued me.'
• 'It took me four months to achieve a weld like that one.'

Nonverbal
Communicate your recognition through body language and facial expressions.

• Smile broadly.
• Thumbs up.
• Move to convey excitement and enjoyment.

Personal Feelings
Describe your emotional reactions as a participant learner, a member of the group, expressing deep, genuine, personal feeling.

• 'What a joy for me to listen to this discussion!'
• 'I am amazed by what you have done.'
• 'I wish I could wave a magic wand to make everyone do that well.'

Intrinsically-Phrased Reward Statements
Positive expressions about emerging learner performance and achievement highlight internal feelings of self-worth and self-satisfaction. (Praise is an extrinsic judgement.)

• Enjoyment-'That was fun!' 'What a pleasure it must have been to do.'
• Competence-'You did it!' 'An accomplishment.'
• Cleverness-'That was tricky.' 'Intelligent.' 'Unique.'
• Growth -'You've taken a step forward.' 'What changes have occurred!'

Construction Spiral (14)
Pose problem questions in a three-step learning cycle-(1) each individual writes down their thoughts, (2) all share in a small groups of three, and (3) compile the answer on the board in front of the whole class avoiding any evaluation or changes to what the class offers. Let the group correct itself. If weaknesses appear or more sophisticated understanding is needed, pose a second problem in the same manner. First questions usually begin at a reflex level to engage the students. Used to construct understandings and concepts.

Round
Each person has a 2 or 3 minute opportunity to express his or her point of view on a given topic, or passes, while others listen. Used to elicit a range of viewpoints and build a sense of safe participation.

Brainstorm
Solicit, and compile for all to see, alternative possibilities without judgements. Used to generate ideas, encourage creativity, involve the whole group, and demonstrate that people working together can create more than the individual alone.

Writing in Class (15)
Focus questions, in-class journals, lecture or reading summaries and in-class essays can improve the learning of the subject matter and, with clear objectives and feedback, improve writing skills, too. See also Classroom Assessment Techniques.

Concept Models
Given handouts that ask a series of leading questions, students work in small groups to figure out how something works or build a conceptual model. They make their own diagrams and record their own observations. Workshop Biology Project, for example.

Simulations and Games (16)
By creating circumstances that are momentarily real, learners can practice coping with stressful, unfamiliar or complex situations. Simulations and games, with specific guiding principles, rules, and structured relationships, can last several hours or even days.

Peer Teaching (17)
By explaining conceptual relationships to others, tutors define their own understanding.

• Question Pairs-learners prepare for class by reading an assignment and generating questions focused on the major points or issues raised. At the next class meeting pairs are randomly assigned. Partners alternately ask questions of each other and provide corrective feedback as necessary.
• Learning Cells-Each learner reads different selections and then teaches the essence of the material to his or her randomly assigned partner.

Examinations (18)
Scheduling an exam stimulates learners to study. Completion, true-false, and multiple choice force memorization of facts and statements. Essay examinations force re-reading and attaining an overall general concept of the material. It is a rather obvious way to involve learners in doing something and getting them to think about what they are doing.

Team Member Teaching (20)
Knowledge Outcomes: Like a jigsaw puzzle, each member of the team is assigned a portion of the whole. Ultimately responsible for knowing all, each group member teaches the others about their piece. Learners need explicit preparation in how to effectively communicate information to others.

Team Effectiveness Design (21)
Cooperative Skills and Knowledge Outcomes: Whatever material is to be learned is presented to teams in the form of a manuscript or text followed by a multiple choice test requiring conclusions or inferences, not locating information in the readings. After completing the test, learners join teams of five to discuss the questions and arrive at consensus as to the most valid answer to each question, without consulting the reading. Then a key is distributed and learners score individual answers as well as the team's.

Student Teams-Achievement Divisions (22)
Knowledge Outcomes: Learners study the material in heterogeneous groups as above, but instead of taking a test, learners play academic games to show their individual mastery of the subject matter. At a weekly tournament, learners are matched with comparably performing learners from other teams. Assignments to the tournament tables change weekly according to a system that maintains the equality of the competition.

Performance Judging Design (23)
Skill Outcomes: Here learners first study how to develop and apply appropriate criteria for judging performance on a skill, such as writing an essay, giving a speech, or constructing a tool chest. They test their cooperatively developed criteria on a product produced anonymously by someone else. Then the learners are assigned the task of creating their own product for other members of the team to review.

Clarifying Attitudes Design (24)
Attitude Outcomes: The teacher prepares an attitude questionaire, usually a multiple choice inventory. Each learner selects from the range of alternatives those that most accurately represent his or her views. Next, teams meet to reach agreement on which of the alternatives represents the soundest action in a particular circumstance. They examine the differences between previous attitudes and discuss together how each may want to be consistent with the agreed-on description of the soundest attitude.

Poster Sessions
Groups of three to five students each complete a poster or stand-alone display that conveys the group's work in (a) identifing and clarifying a controverial issue, (b) locating appropriate information and resources concerning their issue, and (c) critically evaluating the evidence they find. The posters are displayed in a public area of the college, so that not only can the students in the course learn from each others' work, students from other classes and other faculty can see it, too. Workshop Biology class at the University of Oregon, an example.

Goals Stated as Outcomes, Not Processes (25)
Goals for the course are agreed to by the other faculty in the instructional unit to achieve outcomes desired from an integrated program of study. Process statements, such as 'students will participate in....' or 'students will undertake...' are avoided. Outcomes say that, at the end, students will be capable of doing 'x.'

Objectives are Performances (26)
Performances are actual behaviors or classes of behaviors that indicate the presence of the alleged ability that generally are agreed upon by the faculty of the instructional unit. These are the abilities that constitute each goal. Each is formulated using active, measurable verbs from Bloom's Taxonomy (knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, evaluation) and placed at the level of the taxonomy that reflects the amount of time allocated.

Requirements are Detailed in Writing
All desired learner outputs, including the criteria for success and relative weights, are clearly specified to learners in advance.

Grades are Referenced to Criteria (27)
Learner achievement is measured with respect to a specified standard of quality, on a continuum from zero to perfection, not a percentage comparision to other learner's achievements.

Openness to Experience in the Here and Now
Being truthful, personally in touch with one's own feelings and current experience.

Incorporation into Oneself of the Process of Change
Openness to learning opportunities, belief in oneself as an effective learner, and modeling learning, and its accompanying mistakes, visibly to learners.

Unconditional Positive Regard for Others
Deep trust in the underlying goodness of each person, despite how they appear, and the explicitly expressed belief in each learner's ability to learn and grow.

Double loop feedback (29) is a method of providing correctives in a way that maintains the learner's continued engagement in the process of acquiring competence and self confidence. It sequences the statements teacher's make by starting with least inferential and examining both the learner's performance and the evaluator's assumptions at each stage. In double loop learning an open-ended cycle is created where the teacher and the learner cooperatively examine both the learner's performance and the underlying perspectives the teacher brings to regard that performance.

Optimal correction is possible when both parties responsibly work for error detection at each level of inference before proceeding to the next. In other words, get the facts right first; then work to agree upon what 'most people' would agree those facts to mean. As opposed to the natural tendency to think of judgements and opinions first, this procedure holds them in abeyance.

Step 1. Objective Description of Physical Reality
State the facts as you see them:

• 'There are 14 misspelled words here.'
• 'Since I assigned the class the task, you have asked me four questions.'
• 'You pointed your finger at the person you addressed.'

Get agreement before proceding any further, for correcting errors may not be possible unless both parties agree to a common set of facts.

Step 2. Culturally Accepted Meaning
Describe what a jury or group of informed spectators observing the event would conclude and check that generalization:

• 'It hasn't been spell-checked. That true?'
• 'You are using me as the first resource not the handouts or your friends, huh?'
• 'Wouldn't most people conclude that your non-verbal gesture implies an adversarial rather than cooperative stance?'

Again, get agreement. Usually the learner will either justify or correct when the behavior is recognized as holding an accepted meaning. This level of inference is the same used by journalists and anthropologists to describe events and actions as viewed from a culturally specific viewpoint. That viewpoint, too, is also suspect and, to be fair, should be examined simultaneously----thus the term double loop.

Step 3. Judgements and Personal Reality
After the above have been discussed and agreed upon, the judgements of both parties can be stated without inducing animosity or defensiveness. People naturally attach meaning to events in accord with their own life experiences. Nothing is wrong with this, but these opinions are unreliable. By keeping them out of the feedback discussion, both parties can attach meaning to events with greater reliablity, often without judgements ever entering into the discussion. At times it may be wise to check first with the recipient before moving into this stage: 'Would you like my opinion?'

• 'That many mistakes imply you don't care if it is ever read.'
• 'I would like to see you find more answers independently.'
• 'Your message is more likely to be heard if you speak about yourself instead of attacking others.'

Meet the Learner's Needs for Physical Comfort and Accessibility
Insure a comfortable environment where basic needs for all learners are met: lighting, heat, seating, quiet, etc.

Define Negotiable and Non-negotiable Areas
Clearly specify those aspects of class performance that are the instructor's responsibility, such as essential procedures, external constraints, performance requirements (such as attendance, assignments), and summative evaluation - and those parts of the course that have mutual and negotiable responsibility (such as seating arrangements, breaks, groupings).

Clarify the Instructor's Role
Impart the explicit assumption that the teacher is here to facilitate learning by providing resources, tasks, and support. The teacher is not the fount of all knowledge. The teacher trusts the learners to want to learn and therefore will take responsibility for their own learning. Students answer the question, "In order to make this learning opportunity the best for me, what would I like to see the instructor do?" The task is to achieve consensus on what role the instructor will take.

Clarify the Learner's Role as Members of a Learning Community
Clarify expectations the learners have for the instructor and expectations they have for establishing constructive relationships with each other. Students answer the question, "In order to make this learning opportunity best for me, what would I like to see my classmates do?" The class arrives at consensus on what obligations and responsibilities are expected by others.

Involve Learners in Mutual Planning
People tend to feel committed to any decision in proportion to the extent to which they have participated in making it. Their participation is a decision they make, as openly and independently as possible, in the opportunity a course provides. Leaders can optimize learner's readiness and willingness by

1. conveying commonalities that the group shares,
2. describing an ideal view of the possibilities that could be attained in the future,
3. fostering a discussion about those aspects of the goal that are present in the current moment, and
4. inviting commitment of every person to take action, both for themselves and toward the betterment of the group.

The teacher, as leader, brings a more mature view of learner development over time and a thoughtful perspective on the long-term aims of education. The teacher has experienced the evolution of knowledge, skills and dispositions that lay beyond the learner's awareness. The teacher also brings his or her evolving understanding of the relation of the current study to what it means to be human. The content of each course is ultimately social; it relates to what it means to be fully enabled to be a life-long learner, acting for the welfare of self and society. From that maturity, the teacher brings a sympathetic understanding of individuals and processes that open communication and collaboration among all involved.

Although many different activities can be created to enable learning, the teacher's initial role is to set conditions to draw forth the experience of each and every learner. One way, for example, is to create conditions for each learner to represent an aspect of their experience in this content area, share those representations with each other, and then compile together a summary of what the group knows currently. Together with initial questions that arise in the discussion, this ground-setting collaboration explicitly involves everyone, acknowledges each person's uniqueness, and sets the stage for participant responsibility for learning. When "what we know now" is compared to future possibilities -- by way of models of competence, needs of society or organizations, or ideals and values -- learners can begin to identify experiences that are more likely to provide a natural path for their development.

Involve Learners in Cycles of Investigation and Representation
Investigation is the general process of finding out -- reading, measuring, interviewing, observation, etc. Representation is the transformation of experiences into expressions in the various "languages" we have for conveying experience -- words, drawings, diagrams, formulae, dances, poems, sculpture, etc. The former provides input, the latter output.

Involve Learners in Formulating Their Inquiry
Promote attainment of at least a portion of the course requirements through flexible contracts by which the learner

1. translates a learning need into a path of inquiry with investigations and representations specified,
2. identifies, with reflective help, resources and strategies for accomplishing a final product,
3. specifies the evidence that will indicate accomplishment of the dimensions of that product, and
4. participates in determining how this evidence will be judged or evaluated.

Involve Learners in Reflecting Upon Their Learning
Teachers document the course of the learning experience, gathering notes, audio and video recordings, learner’s initial products, and dialog. For example, Classroom Assessment Techniques gather information to guide the adjustments both teachers and learners need to make to improve learning. (32) These are available continuously on an informal basis as the learners work individually and in groups. At the end of the experience, learners reflect together upon -what has occurred for them over the duration of the work. This reflection socially constructs meta-cognitive understanding of learning as a human activity. The elements of risk, playful presentness, interpersonal support, the honoring of uniqueness of individual expression, acknowledgement of the challenges inherent in the representation of experience, and the rewards of accomplishment are apparent in the experiences of the group. If the leader explicitly sets structures to draw these elements out, participants have the opportunity to view themselves as lifelong learners, more able to assume responsibility for their next steps in learning.

Learning to learn, to acquire the essential knowledge, skills and dispositions to participate in what John Dewey (33) calls the "reflective situation," is the essential aim of education. On the one hand, the learner is evolving an attitude of direct open non-defensive attitude of engagement in new areas of learning, an open-mindedness that welcomes suggestions and information, an absorption or engrossment that brings full attention to bear, and a responsibility to make clear choices and accept the results. These dispositions become a matter of knowledge as a result of repeated experiences of reflection. On the other hand, the teacher is evolving also. Each individual learner's method, or way of attack, upon a problem is present in the continuity of his or her experience, acquired habits and interests. Teachers study these ways in order to illuminate and bring openness in the opportunities and challenges he or she provides to the next learners. In this way, reflective processes enable both teachers and learners to become "experienced."

In sum, the experience of the classroom itself is continually open to analysis. By involving learners in reflection, holding a mirror to what they do, the teacher both illuminates and engenders the dispositions to learn.