What Makes a Great Teacher? An Outstanding Researcher?

What makes a great teacher? An outstanding researcher? It turns out many of the answers are pretty similar for both professions.

I both conduct and teach user research, so it recently occurred to me that a good researcher and a good teacher share many of the same characteristics. They both are or should be:

• Passionate

• Deeply invested

• Able to think quickly

• Agile

• Collaborative

• Conversant

• Curious

• Empathetic

• Ethical

• Friendly

• Informative

• Open-minded

• Resilient

Each profession requires quite a bit of improvisation. Curveballs keep interactions interesting, dynamic, fun, and challenging. I learn just as much from my students as they learn from me. I love making my classes dynamic to mirror what happens in the field.

But the similarities go even deeper. Identifying research goals and good research questions (i.e. being a researcher) is very similar to identifying actionable and achievable learning outcomes (i.e. being a teacher).

In both professions, you start with a topic, narrow it down, explore related questions and eventually dive into a juicy, semi-structured mystery. It's the bomb.

Thank you to my teachers during this teacher appreciation week! You inspired me to practice what I preach. I'm off to class (seriously)!