Re: Student Evaluations of Teaching

[Hugh Haskell <hhaskell@MINDSPRING.COM>]

Ludwik said:

> If it were up to me I would evaluate performance of teachers on
> the basis of how well their students know what is expected. To
> make this possible two prerequisites must be met.
But this depends on all the students arriving at the teacher's
doorstep with the same knowledge and the same ability (on the
average) each time that teacher teaches that course. And to a
difficult to determine level, it depends on the "chemistry" of the
class members. we all know that individual classes take on a
"personality" that somehow depends on the mix of personalities in the
class. The personality can have profound effects on how well the
class does as a group.

It seems to me that the problem of evaluating a teacher's
effectiveness is made incredibly difficult by the problem of
determining the beginning point of the students and how they mix.
these variable are probably uncontrollable in any but the most
rigidly controlled environments. Furthermore, all sorts of
unpredictable events can happen during the course of the term that
can have a significant effect on how well the class learns (weather,
unrest of various sorts, illness (of the teacher or of the students),
absence of the teacher for various reasons, etc., etc.).

All of these problems mean that a teacher's effectiveness probably
cannot be reliably measured in the short term. It seems to me that
the only even remotely reliable measure, is to survey the students
after several years, and see how many of them have succeeded in the
field taught by the teacher, or some other reasonably objective
standard.

Hugh


Hugh Haskell
<mailto://hhaskell@mindspring.com>

Let's face it. People use a Mac because they want to, Windows because they
have to..
******************************************************