Learning doesn’t necessarily require teaching. People can teach themselves, especially if they have good self-regulation skills. But the long list of things required for successful learning in the previous section shows why teaching is so valuable: great teachers provide purpose, provide resources, organize practice, develop identity, and structure environments conducive to learning.

Being an effective teacher requires three types of knowledge  ^{1 1}

Cochran, K. F., DeRuiter, J. A., King, R. A. (1993). Pedagogical content knowing: An integrative model for teacher preparation. Journal of Teacher Education.

• Content knowledge  (CK). This is knowledge if your subject. If you don’t have this, you’ll quickly lose your authority. It’s okay to disclose that you don’t know something, but on balance, learners have to believe that you know more than them. 
• Pedagogical knowledge  (PK). This is knowledge of how to teach. I’m imparting some of this knowledge in this book, but most of this has to be acquired through practice. This includes the wide range of teaching methods, classroom management skills, and social and communication skills necessary for managing a group of learners’ attention. 
• Pedagogical content knowledge  (PCK). This is knowledge of how to teach your subject. It turns out that every subject has its own teaching challenges. For example, knowledge of algebra and knowledge of teaching methods isn’t enough to teach algebra; you also have to know what’s hard about solving for x and how to help learners overcome difficulties solving for x.

Most teachers in higher education come with CK. Primary and secondary teachers, because they must be certified, learn some PK and PCK in school, and then more of both as they practice teaching. Most teachers in higher education, however, because they lack formal education in teaching, have to learn PK and PCK on their own (e.g., by reading guides like this). All teachers, to improve, and to acquire PCK, need the same elements of deliberate practice that all learners do: reflection on their teaching, targeted feedback on what is working and what is not, and repetition. Finding someone to coach you on your teaching (to teach you) can be an effective strategy for improving.

Some teachers in higher education might might even lack the CK they need to teach a subject. For example, someone might have a degree in computer science, but be tasked with teaching our server-side development course, which they might never have learned in school or industry. Before such a person can be an effective teacher of server-side development concepts, they need to gain enough CK to teach it. How much is enough? Certainly enough to teach to the learning objectives of the course, but probably more, as students will ask questions that test the depths of your knowledge. Find the time before you prepare to teach a subject to sufficiently master the subject. Perhaps ask for course release or extra compensation for that time to learn.

All that said, one of the biggest mistakes novice higher education teachers make is assuming that CK is enough to teach. This often manifests in teachers assuming they just need to  present  their knowledge for students to learn. Long  lectures , for example, still ubiquitous in higher education teaching, are a perfect example of this: they provide information, but do little else. In fact, conventional lectures are incompatible with nearly everything we discussed about learning in the previous chapter:

• They assume  attention . But every teacher and student knows that most students aren’t paying attention most of the time. 
• They often assume  interest . But as any student will tell you, most teachers just start explaining without spending nearly enough time establishing why they should care about a subject. 
• They lack  practice . The best a student can do during a lecture to practice is to start ignoring you, then practice and refine the ideas themselves.

Lectures miss the fundamental insight about effective teaching: that it is a fundamentally  social  activity. For a learner to learn from a teacher, they first have to  trust  a teacher, and then have to  consent  to giving up some  authority  to a teacher, so that the teacher can guide their learning. Learners can take back this authority at any point by simply moving their attention away from you: pulling out their smartphone, not doing their homework, or dropping out of a class. Therefore, a primary challenge in teaching is to earn trust, authority, and attention, and maintain it throughout a course.

Some students are willing to give authority for very little. In my experience, students from cultures where teachers are given much more respect grant authority almost unconditionally and perpetually. Students from the United States, however, where teachers are given less respect, often demand their teachers  earn  their trust. This means that a critical part of being an effective teacher is spending the first few class periods of a course purposefully developing that trust by demonstrating expertise, effective management of the classroom, clear communication, and clear expectations. If you don’t do this, you won’t have students’ trust, and therefore you won’t be able to teach them.

Suppose you do earn a students’ trust. How do you keep their attention? In our modern world, there are more distractions than ever from in and out of class learning, whether it’s smartphone notifications, a Netflix binge, or simply good old procrastination. The key to sustaining students’ attention is to not overuse it. In class, that can mean using  active teaching methods , in which students  do  more than they listen. Even lectures can be active, including 5-10 minutes of instruction, then 5-10 minutes of activity. Few people can pay attention to one thing for more than half an hour. Respect this fact about attention fatigue and design around it, identifying ways of promoting practice in class.

Outside of class, students might face the same distractions, but have even less to incentivize attention, since you’re not their to engage them. Procrastination, one of the most significant deterrents to learning, has many causes. Students might not be interested; it’s your job to write materials that interest them. Students might not know how to get started; it’s your job to write materials that sufficiently scaffold and decompose the work so they  know  how to get started. Students might have poor time management skills; it’s your job to clearly communicate when things are due so they can make the most of the skills they do have.

Teachers, therefore,  structure  learning. They do it by being inspiring role models and mentors that catalyze interest. They do it by planning learning activities that promote a growth mindset and practice. And they do it by giving detailed, personalized feedback about students’ learning.

Unfortunately, some teachers do the opposite of these things:

• They reinforce a fixed mindset, portraying a world in which some students “get” it and some don’t.
• They humiliate students for not meeting expectations.
• They place the entire responsibility of structuring learning on students. 

All of these behaviors abdicate a teacher’s responsibility to provide continued guidance, feedback, and encouragement.

Teaching is, therefore, as much about a  way of being  as it is about ways of teaching.