The teaching alliance: A perspective on the good teacher and effective learning

Teaching is a part of nearly every professional's activities and, for some, it is a career. At its core, psychotherapy itself is a teaching activity and its therapeutic alliance can provide a useful concept from which to consider the teacher student relationship. From this perspective, the teaching alliance is the fundamental relationship between teacher and student. Here, the teacher establishes a learning context, communicates with a particular student, and develops an educational diagnosis. The reactions of teacher and student to each other and to the learning context can become barriers to the development of the teaching alliance. For the "good teacher", teaching is not a display of knowledge. Rather it is a process which includes identifying an area for learning and deciding on the interventions that will foster learning.