Effective Teaching Behaviors in the College Classroom: A Critical Incident Technique from Students' Perspective.

Teaching is a multidimensional, complex activity. The use of the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) has the potential to be effective in improving teaching as it reveals successful behaviors by identifying key actions associated between excellent/poor performances. The present study sought to identify teaching behaviors that differentiate excellent and very poor performance of undergraduate college teachers in India using CIT, from the perspective of students. Two hundred thirty-seven critical incidents were collected from 60 female students from three different undergraduate humanities courses using questionnaires and personal interviews. Qualitative procedures emphasizing the verbatims students generated were used for data analysis. The data generated from the incidents was subjected to content analysis, and sorted into 6 categories. The six categories identified were: rapport with students, course preparation and delivery, encouragement, fairness, spending time with students outside of class, and control. The frequency with which students reported each behavior as either good or bad is presented. The study yields specific behaviors for faculty to follow to yield improvement in teaching evaluations by students. A list of critical behaviors may have implications in selection, training and performance evaluation of teachers. The present study also underlines the robustness of CIT in education research.