Self Ratings of College Instruction

Abstract

Within each of three Liberal Arts curriculum areas, this study examined intercorrelations among college instructors' self ratings and, in addition, various correlates of those ratings. Item pairs that correlated substantiallywere: "clear" and "approachable," "got students interested" and "how much students learned," and "clear" and "overall teaching ability." Linear composites of specific self ratings significantly predicted general self ratings, and linear composites of instructor characteristics predicted both specific and general self ratings, but the multiple correlations were low. The only instructor characteristics that related substantially to self ratings in all curriculum areas were motivation-related, i.e., their own enjoyment of teaching and liking for the subject matter seem to play an important part in instructors 1 definitions of good teaching and good learning.Among measures that might be used in the evaluation of college teaching are student ratings, peer ratings, and self ratings. A substantial and growing body of literature exists on student ratings (See reviews by Costin, Greenough, & Menges, 1971; and Doyle, 1975), but relatively little research has so far been published on peer or self ratings. Centra (1973) found peer ratings less reliable and more lenient than student ratings (Note 1) and self ratings sometimes lower than, sometimes the same as, but usually higher than student ratings. In the latter study he also noted a good deal of similarity (rank correlation of .77) in the way students and instructors rank ordered items, which suggests that instructors tend to be quite aware of their own relative strengths and weaknesses. Finally, he noted a curriculum effect, in which different patterns of self vs. student discrepancies occurred across broad subject-matter areas.Research on college instructors' self ratings, then, seems to have dealt almost exclusively with the comparison of self ratings to student ratings. No study could be located that looked for factors that define, correlate with, or predict self ratings. Because self evaluation is an important part of instructional diagnosis

Student Ratings and Instructor Self-ratings and Their Relationship to Student Achievement

“…These findings are consistent with some of the recent findings on the lack of relative favorableness of self-over-student ratings (Doyle & Crichton, 1978;Doyle & Webber, 1978). From the fall to the spring semester, instructors as a group lowered their self-ratings whereas the students in creased their ratings of the instructors' effectiveness, including items mea suring the instructors' ability to be interesting and stimulating and a rating of overall ability.…”