Evaluating teaching

Evaluating – Chapter 6 of Macfarlane, B. (2004) Teaching with integrity: the ethics of higher education practice. London: Routledge Falmer. 

I read the case studies first.  

I could relate to Professor Stephanie Rae experience in many ways; however, I found her reactions quite defensive. She took the comments very personally and I think this could cloud her judgment and prevent her from thinking about using the feedback in a constructive way. I think we all can feel a little embarrassed about someone else seeing our students’ feedback or be a bit frustrated with the comments that we find unfair. These are some of my fears and feelings that I experience now knowing that my sessions are going to be observed and commented on this term. Reading about Stephanie has helped me to prepare for the coming evaluations, or dare I say, even looking forward to them. 

Stephanie made a few assumptions that I think could prevent her from evaluating her teaching methods. For example, when learning that students would like more handouts and the slides available before the lecture, she thinks that this would be ‘spoon feeding’ them. Instead, she could think why it is that they asked for the extra material and how to design the handouts that they can inspire further inquiry rather than provide a ready answer.  

Another assumption that Stephanie made was when she learnt about the students still not understanding the assessment and thought that the comments were coming from the students with poor attendance and low marks. I believe it would be much more constructive to look at the assessment format and evaluate if she could make it more accessible, without making any judgments about the students. 

After reading the case studies I came back to reading the whole chapter. I agree with author that a variety of methods should be employed to evaluate the quality of teaching. Very interesting point made here is that students “are not always best placed to make evaluations in areas where they have no expert knowledge (…).” Additionally, the learners may actually mark down our teaching methods when we introduce a problem-based approach, or one based on a critical pedagogy. Very interesting!