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‘Defining effective teaching is not easy’ (Coe et al., 2014: 2). Academic research highlights an excess of definitions of effective teaching or an effective teacher. This section generates some themes from the literature to accommodate different definitions of effective teaching as viewed by different authors.

4.1.1.1 Increasing students’ learning

Clark (1993) states that effective teaching is connected to someone who can increase student knowledge, but defining an effective teacher goes beyond this. Authors have similar thoughts as Clark on effective teaching such as improving students’ achievement (Coe et al., 2014), increasing their learning potential (Mart, 2013) and making a difference in improving their learning (Leithwood, 2004). 4.1.1.2 Ability to instruct heterogeneous students

For Vogt (1984) the effectiveness of a teacher is his/her ability to instruct different students of different abilities. According to the information from the American Institutes of Research database (2006), published by Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, effective teaching is to seek strategies to cater for all the students in a mixed-ability classroom. Levy (2008) says that effective teaching is meeting the needs of all students through differentiated instruction.

4.1.1.3 Planning and presenting the lesson

According to Million (1987), effectiveness depends on how the lesson is designed and delivered. For Jones (1998) effective teaching is to plan the lesson well. Bulger at al. (2002) hold a similar view arguing that effective teaching is to organize the content of the lesson and present it efficiently.

4.1.1.4 Exercising various classroom practices

Wenglinsky (2000), Darling-Hammond et al., (2002), Boaler and Staples (2008) and Rutledge et al. (2015) highlight classroom practices such as quality

instruction, rigorous and challenging curriculum content and high teacher expectations (Wilcox and Angelis 2011) which promote higher order thinking

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(Department of Education & Training, Melbourne, 2005), active participation and a culture of learning (including personalized learning) amongst high and low- performing students. Further classroom practices which define effective teaching are motivating and engaging all students in learning, acknowledging individual differences of the students, using a range of pedagogies, monitoring students’ progress and giving them feedback (Report of Department of Education & Training, Australia, 2009).

4.1.1.5 ‘What’ and ‘How’ to teach

Neil (1991) contends that there are two important aspects if teaching is to be effective: ‘what’ (the knowledge of the subject matter) and ‘how’ (the skills to teach the subject matter). An effective teacher must possess a professional knowledge base of the subject matter along with ‘a lot of instructional strategies and techniques’ (Wichadee, 2010: 2) to deliver the subject knowledge

successfully. Neil (ibid.) says that teaching is not a unitary act but includes learning which is voluntary on the part of learners and hence it is not easy for teachers to persuade students and sell their ideas to them unless they present their ideas interestingly and enthusiastically. This supports earlier contentions by Dewey (1933, 1938 cited in Chen and Lin, 2009: 223) who states that ‘an

effective teacher is not only a person who conveys knowledge to the students, but also an artist whose practices defy notions of what is good or bad as well as what is right or wrong’. Thus the teacher as a knowledgeable artist also seeks to deliver their subject in the best way possible to enhance student learning.

Effective teachers undertake in-depth coverage of fewer topics in a subject area rather than covering all topics superficially in order for key concepts in that discipline to be understood (Department of Education & Training, Melbourne, 2005: 5).

From the above perspectives ‘what’ and ‘how’ to teach becomes very essential in effective teaching.

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4.1.1.6 Ability to connect teachers, students and lesson

Palmer (1999) gives a totally different definition for an effective teacher from a different point of view. He explicitly rejects the idea of techniques or skills in delivering the subject matter, but emphasises the capability of the teacher to make a connection among the teacher, students and the subject being studied:

Good teaching isn’t about techniques. I’ve asked students around the country to describe their good teachers to me. Some of them describe people who lecture all the time, some of them describe people who do little other than facilitate group process, and others describe everything in between. But all of them describe people who have some sort of connective capacity, who connect themselves to their students, their students to each other, and everyone to the subject being studied (p. 27).

The above description indicates that how teachers approach their students, the subject and their work is more important than their knowledge and skills (Hassett, 2000).

The aforementioned different themes on the definition of effective teaching show that a single standard definition cannot express the various aspects of effective teaching since teaching itself undergoes rapid changes every day.

An abundance of literature has examined the effective characteristics of teachers in general such as mastery in subject-matter, explaining the subject clearly, having good pedagogical knowledge, having good communication skills, being friendly, being available and helpful to students, providing a good classroom climate and having a good teaching experience and being self-reflective (Calabria 1960 and Feldman, 1976 in Shishavan and Sadeghi, 2009; Feldman, 1988; Murray, 1991 in Chen, 2012; Adams and Pierce, 1999; Kyriakides, Campbell and Christfido, 2002). (Section 4.1.3.2 presents these attributes under different themes and

explains what is involved in promoting these attributes in the Sri Lankan context.) These characteristics can be considered common to the teachers of all subjects. However, the discipline-specific literature, i.e., in relation to the current doctoral research on the effective characteristics of foreign language teachers (i.e., teachers who teach a language subject as a foreign language) are scarce because of the distinctive nature of language teaching and teachers (Brosh, 1996; Schulz, 2000). Thus, before reviewing the available literature on the characteristics of effective

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language teachers, it is appropriate to understand the distinctive nature and characteristics of language teaching and teachers.