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Do smarter people make better teachers?

C_Felix

Master Poster
C_Felix
Joined
Jul 29, 2009
Messages
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Just outside Raleigh, NC
In my experience they do.


http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/07/20/why.quit.teacher/index.html

From the article:
Attracting the best students to teaching -- and keeping them -- is tough for schools across the country. Average starting teaching salaries are $39,000, and rise with experience to an average of $54,000, according to "Closing the Talent Gap," a 2010 report by McKinsey & Company. Teacher salaries can't compete with other careers, the report said, and annual teacher turnover in the United States is 14%. At "high-needs" high schools, it is 20%.
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and

"Five years ago, 10 years ago, kids would ask me, should they become teachers? I was like, 'Oh, God, yes, I love what I do,' " she said. "Now, I tell my kids, 'You're really, really bright. Why don't you think about going into (this or that?)' They have the potential to be doctors, lawyers, nurses, CEOs and scientists . Why would I recommend to my kids, who I absolutely love, to struggle for years?"
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My favorite and best teacher, Mr. Lesher, was my HS physics teacher. Why was he the best? He knew his stuff. Inside, outside, and upside down; he knew his physics.

I was a teacher for 7 years, and in my experience the answer to the question is yes.

I taught 5th grade (10-11 years old) and all the subjects. I have an elementary ed license, and a license in each of the disciplines in middle school: math, sci, SS, and English.

I know my stuff. (Granted, if I didn't know, we looked it up as a class. The students like to see the teacher learning!)

We had a teacher who also taught 5th, and she new nothing. We had basic ratios we were working one day, and she borrowed a sheet from me.

3/4 = x/16

After about 10 minutes of giving her the sheet, a student came from her class, "Do you have an answer sheet for Mrs. so-and-so."

Here in NC, we have EOGs, End of Grade tests. Most states have them and call them different things, but, here, its the EOG.

Her scores were always the worst in the school.

I had the second highest scores in the school(96.5% passing rate) and my friend Theresa had the highest (98%)


So...do smarter people really make better teachers?

Is it easier to explain something to somebody else if you know it like the back of your hand, or foot, or the inside of your eyelids?

Any studies on this?
(I gave a quick google of, "do smarter people make better teachers" and I couldn't find anything.)

The wife is giving me a look now, so I'm gonna end this here. (Sadly, it isn't a "come here big boy" look. :( )
 
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There is some evidence that students who attend harder-to-get into colleges are better teachers. I don't believe there is direct evidence linking "IQ" to teaching ability.

There is clear evidence that the fraction of teachers drawn from the top end of the college-educated intelligence distribution has declined.
 
Um, I would need to see a large scale regression analysis, why would IQ be related to the skills a teacher needs, there is no established basis.

Classroom management is the number one skill.
 
Not necessarily, no. What they absolutely must have is an understanding of the material they are teaching, and the ability to communicate that understanding effectively to the students. Personally, I feel that the latter is far more important than the former. I've had a few professors during my undergraduate studies who were undoubtedly incredibly intelligent, but were absolutely terrible professors.
 
C_Felix said:
Is it easier to explain something to somebody else if you know it like the back of your hand, or foot, or the inside of your eyelids?
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Anecdotal, but: Yes!

If I don't understand or know something, I can parrot the training material. Get's the job done 9 times out of 10.

But if I truly understand something myself, I can offer different approaches to the issue for different students; I can see and understand which part exactly a student has problems with, and I can focus on that part in further explanations.

And, of course, if I understand something I can understand how and why the explanation I received worked, or where it could be improved.
 
C_Felix said:
We had a teacher who also taught 5th, and she new nothing. We had basic ratios we were working one day, and she borrowed a sheet from me.

3/4 = x/16

After about 10 minutes of giving her the sheet, a student came from her class, "Do you have an answer sheet for Mrs. so-and-so."
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I don't think a teacher necessarily has to be super-intelligent, but if they are that clueless about the material it can cause the students to get frustrated and tune out.

Or worse, when you have a teacher who clearly doesn't understand the material and stubbornly sticks by his/her wrong answer to something. Those students who actually know the rght answer without much respect.
 
All else alike, smarter people are probably better teachers, but all else is not alike. I have met people who very VERY smart (in terms of IQ), but who had very limited social abilities.

Hans
 
Being smart is a necessary but not sufficient condition to being a good teacher. People skills are necessary as well.
 
I would not completely agree with the premise.

In my experience (yes anecdotal), the smartest people were often the worst teachers. The better teachers were tier 2 or 3 on intelligence (above average but not the smartest).

The reasons for this, is that often the very intelligent learn things 'too easily' and can fail to understand the difficulties others have in learning the same material. Those in the next few strata have the intellect to eventually grasp the concepts, but had to struggle through it themselves, so are better able to help others navigate through the learning process.

In fact one of the best teachers I had used to play dumb as one of her techniques. She was a math teacher in her 70's and would often fake senility with phrases like 'Oh I don't remember what we were doing yesterday would somebody please remind me' She constantly did similar things to prompt the students to come up with the answers rather than just lecturing them to us. After I graduated, I met her outside of a classroom environment and she had absolutely no memory issues during that encounter.

Teaching is a skill. intelligence helps, but if learning comes too easily for a person, then they often have a harder time developing the skills necessary to teach.
 
cwalner said:
The reasons for this, is that often the very intelligent learn things 'too easily' and can fail to understand the difficulties others have in learning the same material. Those in the next few strata have the intellect to eventually grasp the concepts, but had to struggle through it themselves, so are better able to help others navigate through the learning process.
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It is easy as teachers to forget to step outside of our learning experiences and recognize that our students may not be as adept at learning as we are. This is something we sometimes forget, but it is also an issue that should have been covered at some point in any teacher preparation program.

What you are talking about is commonly refereed to as scaffolding. This means that whatever you are teaching needs to start at a level the students can understand with support and building to the point where they can function independently.

The problem is when a teacher does not start instruction at a point that students are able to understand and there is no support in place (outside of their ZPD).

I do not think this directly connects to a person's intelligence. It directly connects to whether a person is a good teacher. I have seen highly intelligent teachers completely ignore this and I have seen teachers of average intelligence ignore it as well.

A quality teacher when beginning instruction will first ask: What are the learning goals for this assignment/topic/project? The next question should be, Where are my students in relation to these learning goals?

Then it is a matter of creating the curriculum to bridge this gap.
 
In my experience, teaching in itself is a skill, independent of how literate you are in the subject you teach.

For instance, I am a pianist and musician. The very first private lessons I thought, I found myself dealing with a complete different monster: Expressing these simple (to me) concepts to someone who knows nothing about music theory. All of a sudden, all of these concepts and rules which seemed so common sense and intuitive to me, were incredibly hard to explain to someone, simply because they lack the mental context to understand them. Concepts such as meter and time. As in physics, unless you have a context to set them into, they mean nothing to you. So you find yourself recurring to analogies of all sorts (which makes sense. Just read Hawking's "A brief history of time" and you will see countless common-day analogies which he uses to try to explain very complex scientific theories to the laymen).

The same thing has happened to me in every scenario that is new to me. After having taught music to teenagers and adults, I had to deal with very little kids (from 6 to 10). Weeelll.... that is a whole new monster. See, it's no longer "teaching music". Now it's "teaching music to very little kids who have a very tiny attention span and who get distracted with anything and who don't want to sit down and who can't follow a simple command such as play this note and then play this one, either because they don't feel like it or because they don't understand or because they don't have the discipline to do so or all of the above". And that, my friend, is a completely brand new skill I had to develop.

So in short, teaching is in itself a skill. Whether it's music, physics or how to ride a bicycle. The art of persuading a human mind to adapt itself to this new skill, is in itself a skill which is independent of how much you, as a teacher, master the subject itself.
 
It's EQ that seperates the good teachers from the hacks, not IQ. Learning physics from a brilliant teacher with a high emotional intelligence is a lot more fun than learning physics from a brilliant but ranting and abusive nutcase.
 
rofl said:
It's EQ that seperates the good teachers from the hacks, not IQ. Learning physics from a brilliant teacher with a high emotional intelligence is a lot more fun than learning physics from a brilliant but ranting and abusive nutcase.
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I agree. The truly good teachers are well-rounded emotionally and intellectually. The same goes for leaders in other walks of life.
 
Dancing David said:
Um, I would need to see a large scale regression analysis, why would IQ be related to the skills a teacher needs, there is no established basis.

Classroom management is the number one skill.
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While classroom management is vitally important, in my experience student engagement is the best approach to prevent classroom issues in the first place. When the students are engaged, naturally there will be fewer instances of disruption you need to deal with. Now how you accomplish this is a question for the ages.

Minoosh said:
How can a teacher improve his/her classroom management skills?
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Despite the myriad of workshops and books out there that claim otherwise, I do not think there is one particular way to conduct classroom management. I am of the philosophy that what you do needs to be true to who you are. If you are by nature quite do not try to be loud. Students know when you are being inauthentic and in the long run this works against you. The application of the selected methodology must also be consistent.

I have seen different styles of classroom management be effective, yet seen the same styles completely fail in the hands of other teachers.

Teaching is as much art as it is science.
 
I ask about learning classroom management skills because although I've often been called "smart" I fell on my face (literally, in one case - I tripped over a kids' crutches) trying to "manage" hordes of 14-year-olds. At the district's request I came in as a volunteer pending my official hire date. It took a couple of weeks to get officially hired and meanwhile a sub had to be present. The kids read the situation astutely and took advantage of it. I never got sufficient control of the classroom to really teach and I eventually resigned.

Classroom management books give me insight and ideas but I'm still scared of being in charge. I don't know how to get over that.
 
If the OP is asking if geniuses make better teachers than people who are just "smart", then I would say "no". Obviously, being very smart, and knowing your material can help make a person a better teacher up to a certain point, but beyond this point, students don't necessarily have a better teacher if he or she is a super genius as opposed to just being smart enough to know the material and properly teach it.
 
My answer would be, "yes, but...". OF COURSE intelligent teachers in general are better for the students than dumb teachers (duh). But sometimes qualities like perseverance, caring, and dedication are more important. I would rather have an average teacher who has the latter qualities than a genius who doesn't.
 
Minoosh said:
I ask about learning classroom management skills because although I've often been called "smart" I fell on my face (literally, in one case - I tripped over a kids' crutches) trying to "manage" hordes of 14-year-olds. At the district's request I came in as a volunteer pending my official hire date. It took a couple of weeks to get officially hired and meanwhile a sub had to be present. The kids read the situation astutely and took advantage of it. I never got sufficient control of the classroom to really teach and I eventually resigned.

Classroom management books give me insight and ideas but I'm still scared of being in charge. I don't know how to get over that.
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14-year-olds are some of the worst you can encounter and getting off on the right foot with any class is extremely difficult to remedy. My impression is that good classroom management requires practice, and I think that's the only way to get over your fears.

I also believe one should start out slightly stricter than one believes necessary and tentatively loosen the reins later on, but I'm finding that hard to do.
 
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