By Dr. Hassan Shirvani–Opinions\u00a0vary\u00a0widely on the worth of\u00a0student\u00a0evaluations of their teachers.\u00a0 To some, they are useful tools for providing faculties with timely student feedbacks,\u00a0for\u00a0assisting students with their course selections, and\u00a0for\u00a0helping administrators with their personnel decisions.\u00a0 To others, they are unreliable and biased instruments for eliciting teaching evaluations from the students that are too immature, inexperienced, or capricious to meaningfully pass judgment on the quality of their teachers.\u00a0 In addition, critics of teaching evaluations are also concerned that such evaluations can result in popularity contests among faculty, thus giving rise to grade inflations and deteriorating academic standards.\u00a0 Finally, some detractors of teaching evaluations assert that student views of their teachers are often tainted by a host of ethnic, gender, racial, and religious biases.\u00a0 While there are some legitimate grounds for the views expressed on both sides of this debate, it is a safe bet that the teachers with positive evaluations generally support these evaluations, while those with less favorable reviews often find them wanting.<\/p>\n
The Evidence<\/strong><\/p>\n Even though there is little hope of ever empirically settling these opposing views, there seems to be some evidence that, if anything, students are remarkably accurate and consistent in their teaching evaluations.\u00a0 For example, student ratings of the same teacher in the same semester across different courses, or different sections of the same course, correlate quite highly: 0.95 for a class size of about 50 students. \u00a0Such a high correlation indicates that an overwhelmingly large majority of\u00a0students share essentially the same view of their teachers, for better or for worse.\u00a0 Similarly, the ratings of the same teacher correlate quite highly over time, 0.82, again implying great consistency in teacher evaluations by successive classes. \u00a0Finally, a high positive correlation, 0.77, is also reported between the results of current student surveys and the student surveys conducted 10 to 20 years after graduation. \u00a0That is, students generally fail to significantly revise their ratings of their teachers with greater age, experience, or maturity.<\/p>\n On the other hand, regarding the issue of popularity contests among teachers, the available evidence again offers grounds for reassurance.\u00a0 For example, the average correlation between student evaluation scores and their “expected grades\u201d has consistently been found to be\u00a0quite low, about 0.20.\u00a0 Thus, even if students do tend to appreciate \u201ceasier course requirements\u201d and \u201cmore lenient grading policies,\u201d they seem to be mature enough not to mistake these ingratiating gestures for good teaching.\u00a0 In addition, this positive correlation, small as it is, may simply indicate that students genuinely expect to do better (worse) in classes they seem to like more (less).<\/p>\n Finally, and regardless of how students feel about their teachers, there is also significant empirical evidence that there indeed is a relatively high positive correlation, 0.50, between the student teaching evaluation scores and the student learning outcomes, as measured by student grades in a host of common tests.\u00a0 That is, the evidence suggests that students generally learn more form the teachers that they tend to rate higher.\u00a0 In addition, there is also substantial evidence that, whatever our qualms about their accuracy, there is presently no other measure of teaching effectiveness that correlates as highly with subsequent student learning performances as student teaching evaluations.\u00a0 In other words, while student teaching evaluations may be imperfect, they are still the best available predictors of how well students will subsequently do academically.<\/p>\n Peer Reviews?<\/strong><\/p>\n There are, of course, those who recommend peer reviews as a better source of informed judgment about the quality of teaching. \u00a0According to this view, those with many years of teaching and scholarship records are far better positioned to determine whether their colleagues have the necessary depth and breadth of knowledge or the requisite class management skills to be effective teachers.\u00a0 There is certainly much to be said for such a view.\u00a0 However, those universities which have used this approach often report high correlations, 0.65, between their peer and student evaluations, indicating that using both approaches may prove redundant. \u00a0In addition, peer reviews are often problematic through such complications as lack of familiarity with\u00a0out-of-field\u00a0subjects, faculty biases towards each other, and inter-departmental rivalries.\u00a0\u00a0In such situations, it probably makes more sense for department Chairs to review instruction\u00a0to ensure sufficiency in areas\u00a0in which\u00a0students may lag in their evaluations, such as course\u00a0contents\u00a0and levels of\u00a0coverage.<\/p>\n Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n As the foregoing makes it clear, student\u00a0teaching evaluations, despite all their shortcomings, are still the best available tools of assessing teaching effectiveness.\u00a0 If used properly as a part of a more comprehensive assessment mechanism, they can be quite informative and useful.\u00a0\u00a0A refusal to offer these evaluations, or even to constantly keep denigrating their relevance and worth, will simply send the unintended message to students and their parents that colleges\u00a0have little interest in documenting the quality of their instructions through the testimonies of those who are perhaps among the best-placed to pass judgment on this issue.\u00a0 Indeed, being cognizant of this fact, many prestigious colleges routinely provide their students with easy access to all previous teaching evaluations of their faculties.\u00a0 Such evaluations are even available for the tenured faculties with sterling scholarly reputations on the grounds that good scholarship may not necessarily beget good teaching.\u00a0 These colleges are therefore sending the clear message that they consider regular feedbacks from their students to be a vital part of their continued search for teaching excellence.<\/p>\n Hassan Shirvani, Ph.D.<\/a>
\nProfessor Cullen Foundation Chair in Economics<\/p>\n