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Re: [Phys-L] Student Evaluations of Teaching Are Not Valid Gauges of Teaching Performance - Yet Again!



In other words, what you do is what is expected, and it agrees with both
what the students and administrators expect. It is good for maintaining a
job.

But how would such questions line up with an objective evaluation such as
the FCI/FMCE or the grade in a subsequent course taught by other randomly
assigned teachers?

For example an IE class would get negative responses on "explanations are
clear" because a lot of the time would not involve lectures. If the tests
put a premious on using reasoning rather than rote memorization they are
often considered unfair. There is a paper where the author showed that the
evaluations went up when the expected grade was high, and down if it was
low. Then when the grade was different from the expected, the evaluations
changed. I have seen some students who made very large gain on the FCI, but
didn't rate the teacher highly, so the perception of learning is very
different from what is actually learned. The questions about homework are
not a good indicator. Indeed in many countries the homework is much lighter
than the US and they get higher scores. There is research showing that
homework often reinforces the wrong things. In addition there is research
showing that harder homework with rich context and high conceptual content
works much better. Such homework must have a group component because it is
often too hard for an individual.

The perception of most people about their job is that they are doing a good
or even superior job. Incompetent people (I am not calling anyone
incompetent on this list) believe they are doing a superior job. But when
they are trained to recognize competence, they improve. So without some
form of objective evaluation compared to perception, it is not possible to
evaluate one's ability.

The evaluation form which has been found to correlate with superior learning
is RTOP. The areas in the list below are mostly not RTOP. However they are
somewhat Madeline Hunter consistent. So I would say they are not optimal
questions for evaluating learning. A better evaluation would be to give the
MPEX as a pre and post questionnaire and see whether students improve in
their attitudes. It is available on the web.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX


I think if the questions were much more specific, the students might
have been able to give more objective input. The questions I
use when I
have my (high school) students evaluate me are to rate me from 1 to 5
where:

1 = not acceptable
2 = below average
3 = about average
4 = above average
5 = outstanding

in the following areas:

presentation/teaching of material

learning objectives are clear

I am able to achieve the learning objectives

explanations are clear

subject is well organized

enough homework to be well-prepared for tests

I am able to do the homework

homework is relevant to each topic

amount of material covered on each test

my test grades are consistent with what I expect

tests are based on the classwork

grading criteria are clear & fair

homework & tests graded in a timely fashion

pace of course

classroom management

teacher's availability

teacher's approachability

teacher's flexibility

teacher's fairness

teacher's enthusiasm

teacher contributes to my learning

teacher cares about how well I'm doing

I find that the aggregated responses I get from these
questions seem to
match pretty well with administrators' evaluations of my teaching, as
well as my own perceptions of my strengths and weaknesses.
--
Jeff Bigler
Lynn English HS; Lynn, MA, USA
"Magic" is what we call Science before we understand it.

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