Teaching is fundamentally a social activity that involves effective relationship-building with students. It starts with acknowledging the curricular context of the teaching and the expectations of the students. For example: Is the course core or elective? Where is it placed in the student’s program of study? What is the knowledge of the students when they enter the course? What other courses are the students taking? Why might the students be interested in the course material? How might I, that is, the educator, motivate the students to learn?
Teaching is more likely to be successful if students have a clear understanding of what they are expected to learn (i.e., clearly stated course learning outcomes), what the course provides that will help them construct their knowledge pertaining to the learning outcomes (i.e., what are the course learning activities), and how each student will know the level at which they have achieved the learning outcomes (i.e., what are the learning assessments).
The sequence of learning activities in a course should be carefully designed such that students can recall and build upon previously acquired knowledge. Ideally, each concept introduced in a course arises logically from the preceding concept and is, in some way, dependent on the preceding concept. Similarly, each concept learned is foundational to the subsequent concept to be learned in the course. Further, best-practice teaching acknowledges that some concepts are more significant to the learning process than others. That is, once a “threshold” concept is understood, then a portal has been “opened” to many other concepts (See the work of Meyer and Land). An example of a threshold concept is the notion of complex numbers. Once learned, a new intellectual world is open to the student.