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Teaching as a Profession Aditi M Sengupta Harvard Medical school, Post Graduate Association Teaching can be depicted as a set of skills framed on the guidelines of global and intercultural competence, civic and social responsibility, ethical reasoning and action, critical and creative thinking, analysis and problem solving, leadership and teamwork, information and technology proficiency, written communication and professional communication. Incorporating some or all of these qualities is the basis of my notion in teaching and learning. The focus of instruction is on student learning and not on faculty teaching. Too often, faculty members concentrate on what they want their student to know. However, effective and high quality education imparts critical and creative thinking capability to a student. Professional education requires appreciating the concepts taught and their application in identifying and meeting the challenges of the processes and experiences. When instruction is focussed only on accumulation of factual knowledge, learning is quickly extinguished. Hence a continuous method of quantitative and qualitative method of inquiry can be a parameter of discipline at the same time adding excitement to learning. A good teacher is expected to show interest and enthusiasm by attending all aspects of effective instruction.The effectiveness in learning is demonstrated by being well organized and being expressive in presenting informations in lectures concisely. The course syllabus should be complete and efficiently organized for the students' ready access.Evaluation of students' knowledge and skills are done in a reliable and fair way to optimize the valid goals of the course objective. It is apparent to students that good teachers solicit and use feedback from learners , colleagues to improve their instruction methods. Learning complex concepts and principles and incorporating them into one's structure of knowledge require both time , skills and proficiency. Periodically an understanding of the information and technical skills in teaching and designing research are a vital component of understanding problems.Solution is expected through teaching and students' learning and written and professional communications in journals to reframe and reemphasize the concepts taught and put them into practice. Teachers manifest the best qualities in human relations like openness, respect, trust and a sense of humor.Students are motivated for intrinsic reasons such as (1) the course of a well planned instruction, that is transparent and fair,(2) a clear understanding between learning and real life and (3) the understanding that the teachers care about their disciplines and their students. This article was submitted for Faculty Assessment at Davenport University, Michigan in 2010. Copyrighted 2011.
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