Poll: Great teachers born that way, not taught

Teacher quality is at the center of the major debates about American schools — how do you measure quality teaching in a classroom and why is America falling behind other countries in educating children?

But a new Phi Delta Kappa Gallup Poll released earlier this week suggests Americans do not believe that hard work is what makes a great teacher great — it's natural talent.

Seventy percent of those polled believe that the ability to teach or instruct students is more the result of natural talent than of college training.

Jay Matthews with The Washington Post commented on this phenomenon on Thursday, calling the results to the question "troubling."

He spoke with a research psychologist who writes frequently on school issues who said the answer to the question would have been very different had any other profession been asked about.

"What I find so annoying is that by including the question, they have validated the mistaken opinion (think attributional error) that there is no special training needed to become a teacher, and that people are born to it," the psychologist told Matthews. "Given that the majority of human behaviors, particularly those that are intentional, are shaped by life circumstances, education and experiences, the notion of 'natural talent' for teaching is akin to associating intelligence with race or flatness to Earth."

One person who commented on Matthew's story admitted to being a teacher and said he or she did not know whether teachers were great because of talent or because they worked hard, "but there is one truly big difference so far I have been able to distinguish between my colleagues who are effective with students and those who are not: those who are effective truly *CARE* about the students and WANT them to succeed and feel called to the profession."

Others wrote that they felt like experience was a big factor in how good a teacher was.

"Success or failure at almost anything is a combination of talent, training and effort. In some cases, natural talent provides a huge advantage," wrote another, "but it has to be honed with EFFECTIVE training and practice."

One person suggested a good follow-up question to the poll: "if teaching is a natural talent, then are any of the current reform models making the profession more attractive to those naturals? Also, if training is what's most important, why is the current reform movement so bent on denigrating advanced degrees for teachers?"