What does it mean to be an effective teacher?

A person who has enough knowledge about a particular topic may teach; however the question remains, does this make them an effective teacher? Even though there are many contributing factors that can affect a student’s performance such as physical, psychological, sociological, and economical, it should be noted that no student enters school as a “failure”. It comes down to the processes and procedures that the teacher employs, which are the main cause of student’s success or failure (Lembo, as cited in Westwood, 2004, p. 79). An effective teacher will employ processes, procedure and attitudes that maximises understanding and enables a student to easily process and apply that learning to their daily lives. Furthermore, an effective teacher is a person who is able to encourage and motivate a student to promote a positive learning environment.
Before discussing the aspects of effective teaching, it would be fitting to firstly discuss what teaching is. A teacher can be seen as a person who provides opportunities for students to learn. The teacher’s main goal is to relay information and to impart knowledge to the learner; however becoming an effective teacher is more than just a process of transmitting information onto students. It is about the ability to take “raw” content and transform that information into understandable and meaningful knowledge. By doing this, the student will be able to easily absorb this information and access deep knowledge. The process of accessing deep knowledge involves key steps which Killen (2005, p. 39) suggests are, … identifying the important concepts and principles that students need to learn, organizing those concepts and principles into a coherent structure, devising effective ways of explaining the key ideas and their relationships, identifying themes and issues that will help students integrate their knowledge, and developing learning experiences that will lead students to deep understanding.
Killen’s approach displays how