She does indeed seem to assert that, supporting the point with an anecdote I found less than convincing. But suppose we grant her that point. Let us suppose tha

She does indeed seem to assert that, supporting the point with an anecdote I found less than convincing. But suppose we grant her that point. Let us suppose that "master brain debugger" is indeed the crucial skill that makes for a good teacher. Here's the problem: she doesn't (in this article) indicate how THAT skill can be taught either! So for all we know, being able to do THAT - debug what's going on in a student's head - might be an innate, untrainable thing that teachers are innately born with or magically acquire through experience without knowing how it's done. So for this point to be useful, we'd need both (a) stronger evidence that it's actually true, (b) evidence that it's teachable. Absent those things, it's just somebody's random assertion. And wouldn't it be just as easy to tell a story of that sort claiming the key to great teaching is empathy, or flexibility, or knowing the material really well? (Actually, the featured anecdote featured TWO attributes. (1) skill at debugging what's going on in the student's brain, (2) skill at figuring out how best to CORRECT the misconception without unduly harming the student's ego. And I'm sure these are both useful skills for a teacher, but I would need more convincing that they matter more than all the OTHER skills such as being organized, speaking clearly, presenting NEW material effectively, etcetera.) Side note: in the back of my mind while I read the piece I was probably thinking about Direct Instruction. One provably superior teaching method is to have teachers follow an exact script that is carefully designed to minimize misconceptions in the first place. If teachers could get better at not introducing misconceptions to their students, it might be less important to be good at debugging those misconceptions.