Influence of Instructor Personality on Student Evaluation of Teaching: A Comparison between English Majors and Non-English Majors

Abstract

160 non-English major students studying at a four-year university and 193 English major students studying at a career college of foreign language in Japan completed a questionnaire regarding instruction and instructor personality. The purpose of the current study was to examine whether the students' instructional and personality ratings predicted their general evaluation of course. This study also investigated whether the relations between instructional and personality ratings and the general course evaluation varied by major. A significant correlation was found between the instructional scale and the overall evaluation of the course regardless of students' majors: The more the students found the class interesting and was appropriately managed, the higher the overall evaluation. However, the findings indicate that while teacher's extroversion, thoughtfulness and neuroticism mattered to the non-English major group when evaluating the overall effectiveness of the class, teacher personality did not influence the English major group. The authors believe the findings of the present study could contribute to a better understanding of the nature of student evaluations that have always been a source of controversy, and sometimes discontent during their history.

What Makes an Effective English-Medium Course in China? Experiences and Perspectives of International Undergraduates

“…With reference to Murray et al’s (1990) 29 types of teacher personality, the lecturer was perceived by the students as a meek (mild-mannered), sociable (friendly, outgoing, enjoys being with people), supporting (helpful and gives sympathy and comfort), and objective (fair and bias-free) person. Although a previous study has reported that teacher personality did not influence English majors’ evaluation of the effectiveness of their courses (Mori and Tanabe, 2015), the current research found that international English majors in the focal EMI course considered the lecturer’s personality as crucial to the effectiveness of the class. As far as these students were concerned, the lecturer’s personality determined the type of teacher-student relationship and consequently affected teaching effectiveness.…”

Mapeo sistemático de la literatura sobre evaluación docente (2013-2017)

“…There are 14 works that analyze associated factors with some form of impact on the results of the teacher evaluations made by the students; to mention a few, among these is the point at the school cycle in which the evaluation is carried out [43], the size of the groups [52], the duration of the evaluation [44], the characteristics of the students who evaluate [18], the results in learning [19,22,106] or the teacher's characteristics [2,27,32].…”

Comparative Analysis of the Effect of Immersive English Teaching

“…The practice-communication-autonomy theoretical model points out the direction for students to conduct immersive learning, and it also indicates the possible ways for students to implement the activities of immersive classroom English teaching [29,30]. Teachers let students exert their abilities in the immersive English teaching environment, and develop and enhance their actual language application abilities through set scenarios, collaborations, and conversations, etc.…”