The Skillful Teacher

The Core Assumptions of 
Skillful Teaching
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T
HE
S
KILLFUL
T
EACHER
The rest of this chapter explores these three assumptions and gives
examples of how they might play themselves out in practice.
Assumption 1: Skillful Teaching Is Whatever
Helps Students Learn
At first glance this seems a self-evident, even trite, truism—a kind
of Hallmark greeting card of practice. If asked, most of us would say
that our teaching choices are made with the interest of helping stu-
dents learn. The reality is, of course, much more complicated than
this assumption at first implies since a practice or activity that helps
one student learn can, to other students in the same class, be con-
fusing and inhibiting. If we take this assumption seriously, it means
our teaching becomes more, not less, complex. This assumption
does not mean, however, that we descend into a relativistic quag-
mire and conclude that since classroom reality can never be pre-
dicted there is little point preparing for it. The truth is that most of
us approach teaching a new class with a collection of biases, intu-
itions, hunches, and habits that frame our initial activities. Some
of these come from personal experience, some from the advice of
trusted colleagues or superiors, and some from professional standards
and models of practice. These inclinations suggest ways of teaching
that we feel will, on the whole, benefit the students we work with.
These habits of mind and of practice can be extremely useful in
helping us set up our class, and we may well find that they achieve
the outcomes we intend. But sometimes they can get in the way,
leading us to do things out of habit that students find unhelpful.
Alternatively, we sometimes feel we ought to follow what the pro-
fessional ethos in our discipline prescribes, whether or not it fits the
situation we face. For example, as someone who came up through
the field of adult education, my training and socialization predisposes
me to move to discussion-based teaching as quickly as possible.
For some students this may indeed be helpful, but for others too
quick a rush to discussion may confuse or even terrify them. This is
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