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About Student Ratings Offer Useful Input to Teacher Evaluations

Center for Research on Educational Accountability and Teacher Evaluation (CREATE)
Student ratings add a valuable component to the range of input for the evaluation of teachers. Although many question the validity of such ratings, under certain conditions, results can and should be useful.

Student ratings of instruction are widely used as a basis for personnel decisions and faculty development recommendations in post-secondary education today. This article addresses concerns about their validity and presents a case for the use of student ratings in teacher evaluation. In this discussion, student ratings refer to those in which
students are asked to complete a form or write a short free-form evaluation anonymously, either during or immediately after a class period, the final exam, or a session after grades are issued.

CONCERNS

Oftentimes, student rating forms ask many questions about matters that students do not appear to be in any position to judge reliably. In addition, the fact that the overall rating of teaching merit by students is only statistically related to learning gains is a concern if one believes that statistical indicators should not be used to make personnel decisions about
how i can write my paper for me. Another concern is that the validation studies that are used to justify student ratings use questionable indicators instead of the true criterion. For example, some of them correlate the student ratings with peer ratings of teacher merit instead of with superior learning gains.

ARGUMENTS FOR USING STUDENT RATINGS

There are several strong arguments for using student ratings to evaluate teachers. (See figure titled "Nine Potential Sources of Validity for Student Ratings of Instruction.") Students are in a unique position to rate their own increased knowledge and comprehension as well as changed motivation toward the subject taught about stages in writing a research proposal. As students, they are also in a good position to judge such matters as whether tests covered all the material of the course.

In addition, students can observe and rate facts (i.e. an instructor's punctuality, the legibility of writing on the board) that are relevant to competent teaching. They can also identify and rate whether the teacher is enthusiastic. Does he or she ask many questions? Encourage questions from students, etc.?
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