In early October 1971, 252 students in 13 introductory and educational psychology sections responded to a Student Opinion Questionnaire containing measures of seven stable dimensions on college teaching. Ten days later, the instructors, who had been grouped according to the initial level of student evaluation, received feedback. In December, 231 students responded again to the Student Opinion Questionnaire. The students' initial evaluation of instruction was found to be a significant source of influence on instructor change after feedback. Instructors who were evaluated moderately well improved their teaching significantly on skill, interaction, and rapport, when compared to instructors rated more favorably. They showed trends toward decreasing work overload and improving rapport when compared to instructors rated more unfavorably.
To find out whether a discrepancy between the instructor's and the student's evaluations of teaching influence teaching, 13 introductory and educational psychology instructors and their students were given a Student Opinion Questionnaire (SOQ) twice: on the fourth week of a fall term and eight weeks after feedback sessions with the instructors. The instructors received feedback on the direction and amount of initial discrepancy. The results showed that the unfavorable discrepant instructors (instructor rating better than students) changed more on skill, feedback, rapport, general teaching ability, and the overall value of the course than the favorably discrepant instructors (student ratings better than instructor). The unfavorably discrepant instructors improved their teaching significantly more than the favorably discrepant instructors.The feedback of student evaluations of teaching to teachers brought some improvements in teaching at the elementary and high school levels (Bryan, 1963;Gage et al., 1963;Tuckman and Oliver, 1968). The results, however, were less encouraging at the college level. In studies by Centra (1972b), Miller (1971), and Pambookian (1972, instructors who received feedback did not significantly improve their teaching when compared to those who had no access to such information. Interestingly, nevertheless, Pambookian (1974) found that the initial level of student evaluations of instruction had a strong influence on instructors. In his study, the moderately rated instructors developed more positive changes in the teaching dimensions of skill, interaction and rapport, after the feedback, than did the 1 This article is based on portions of a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Ph. D. degree at the University of Michigan. The author wishes to acknowledge the help given by Wilbert J. McKeachie and Alvin F. Zander and thank them for their suggestions.
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