Reflecting on nearly half a century's research on "effective teaching", this essay attempts to arouse a lot of suspicion, including ambiguous definition of connotation, a false antithesis and the imbalance between teachers and students. Accordingly, this study further reveals hidden thinking obstacles, such as over-reliance on technical rationality, wrong inference and the separation of the dialectical relationship between teaching and learning. As a future research direction, the ideal teaching should focus on virtue rather than efficiency, giving consideration to effectiveness and responsibility.