When it comes to teaching I think that "effective" and "good" are interchangeable terms. It is my opinion that to be an effective teacher you have to be a good teacher and to be a good teacher you must be an effective teacher. My background in philosophy has informed my understanding of what an effective teacher is; none have influenced me more so than Plato's Republic. Of course his belief that Art and Music were the ultimate in educational endeavors may have resulted in a bit of a bias, but I do believe that his underlying ideas relating to teaching and learning are worth taking a look at. The core of his philosophy is that everyone is capable of learning regardless of class, status, race, gender, etc. Good teaching and effective teaching is not only inclusive of all students, but also is adaptive to individuals considering regional, cultural and ethnic differences among others. Where Plato looses me is in his proposed system of education - I do not believe that advancement through educational systems should be selective. His model proposes that only students chosen by an elite group should advance onto further studies once they have completed the lower tier of the system.
Effective/good teaching is also paying close attention to the intended purposes of lessons (planned or otherwise) to ensure that they not only meet academic requirements and prepare students for future instructional learning, but also reach beyond the institutional sphere equipping students with tools they can use in other areas of their being. For example, in our technology driven society it is my opinion that teaching students how to locate information is more important than the information itself.
I used to think that being an effective teacher also had some element of acknowledging learner styles and developing lessons that cater to each of the three main styles (visual, audio, kinetic) with the idea that some people learn better in one style than in another. Recently we looked at learner styles in Educational Psychology and the research on learner styles does not support this. We do have the capacity to store memory in any of those three formats, but we don't necessarily learn better or worse using one of the other. In fact we need to use each to learn different types of information. I still think that diversifying lessons keeps them more interesting and engaging for both the student and the teacher, and using multiple instructional methods can only help to enforce recently acquired information. If we have learned anything from the failings of computers it is to back up your data.
