The authors conducted a study of effective teaching using structured interviews of 29 university professors who had won teaching awards. They found that effective teaching is more than a bundle of techniques used in a masterful manner. Indeed, it embodies an elusive quality that the authors call caring. Caring, they found, reveals itself in two major dimensions: attitudes toward and availability to students and use of teaching techniques. Caring professors saw themselves as concerned about students' learning and about being available to help students learn. They endorsed a variety of teaching techniques to scaffold students' learning and to help students learn from one another. In essence, the professors studied viewed themselves as communicating both directly and indirectly a concern for their students' welfare. The study did not, however, uncover the genesis of the caring spirit, and the question remains why some professors care about their students and others do not.