Towards an Inclusive Approach to Evaluation of Teaching

Abstract

This research seeks to further knowledge on student and faculty evaluation of teaching within a small Asian university, with the aim of exploring the relationship between students and faculty perceptions of teaching. It seeks to establish faculty perception of fairer mechanisms or collective mechanisms for evaluating teaching, learning, and curriculum course materials towards evaluating the faculty. This contrasts with common use of student evaluation of teaching as a single approach. Faculty perceptions of student evaluations of teaching have been well researched in several contexts but less so in Middle Eastern universities with highly transient faculty drawn from different countries across the world.

Mixed methods, secondary and primary data of student and faculty evaluations of teaching are studied. Course materials and instruction ratings are found to be moderately correlated. Faculty are satisfied with the use of the student evaluation and faculty self-evaluation of teaching. However, outcomes of faculty self-evaluation and student evaluation of teaching are moderately positively correlated. Outcomes of student and faculty evaluations of teaching are found to be clustered at the upper end of the Likert scale. The implication is that there are small differences between scores from student evaluation and faculty self-evaluation of teaching. However, findings from the qualitative comments provide more valuable policy arguments. The findings indicate that half of the faculty agree or strongly agree with the use of SETs for customer satisfaction or as a control tool. However, a model that combines multiple evaluation tools is suggested by faculty for a holistic evaluation.