Students' Prior Subject Interest in a course showed similar correlations with student ratings of instructional effectiveness in two university settings (N = 1102 classes). Correlations between Prior Subject Interest and different dimensions of instructional effectiveness varied from approximately zero to .44. Though these correlations were not high, Prior Subject Interest predicted student ratings better than any of 15 other student/course/instructor characteristics considered (e.g., Expected Grade, Class Size, Workload/Difficulty, Teacher Rank). Instructor self-evaluations of their own teaching effectiveness (N = 329 classes) were also positively correlated with both their own and their students' perceptions of Prior Subject Interest; the dimensions that were most highly correlated -- particularly Learning/Value -- were the same as observed with student ratings. Since both student and instructor self evaluations were similarly related to Prior Subject Interest, it appears that this variable actually affects instructional effectiveness in a way that is accurately reflected in the student ratings.
For two essay questions—Question 1 given to one sample ( N 1 = 100) and Question 2 to a second group ( N 2 = 100)—ratings of student performance rendered by professors of English and by professors in other disciplines were compared for reliability and concurrent validity. From the data analyses it was concluded that the reliability and validity of the ratings provided by professors outside of English departments and by professors in English departments were nearly comparable. It appeared that differences in the reliability and concurrent validity of ratings assigned to writing samples of students might be more a function of the nature of the question posed or of variations in the average ability level of examinee groups than of differences in level of expertise on the part of readers.EDUCATIONAL AND PSYCHOLOGICAL MEASUREMENT 1980,40 ALTHOUGH considerable attention has been directed toward comparisons of direct or indirect assessment of writing skill (customarily involving respective use of essay or objective tests of standard written English) as evidenced by the comprehensive review of relevant literature and by the results of an empirical study following that review (Breland and Gaynor, 1979), an important concern does exist regarding the extent to which the reliability and validity of ratings of student performance on essay examinations are dependent upon the level of expertise of the reader. In particular, within the college or university setting, are judgments rendered by professors outside English departat UNIVERSITE DE MONTREAL on August 22, 2015 epm.sagepub.com Downloaded from
In an instructional program planned to increase the academic growth of children in preschool and in primary school grades (some of whom were learning disabled or educationally handicapped), teaching materials were developed to stimulate use of right and left brain function as a means of equalizing hemispheric development and of maximizing learning capabilities. For a public school treatment (experimental) sample, a public school comparison sample, and a private school treatment sample, an attempt was made to obtain evidence of the construct validity of several pupil ability measures hypothesized to represent an orientation to right, left, or integrated hemispheric function and of teacher observation subscales intended to reveal behaviors or activities in a school setting that were hypothesized to portray a preference for right or left brain function. Application of a multitrait-multimethod matrix to selected posttest measures for the experimental public school and private school samples did not establish the convergent or divergent validity of measures chosen to represent hypothesized right hemisphere (RH) and left hemisphere (LH) functions. Factor analyses of correlational matrices of selected pretest and posttest measures along with other variables across the three samples (six analyses in all) in general did not provide support for the existence of two dimensions hypothesized to reflect constructs of RH or LH orientation. The factor analytic outcomes posed two alternative interpretations of (a) the presence of two general ability dimensions of abstract (information processing of semantic and symbolic content) and concrete (information processing of figural content) thinking or (b) the appearance of instrumental dimensions corresponding to method or scale format variance rather than to variance associated with hypothesized latent traits. Recommended procedures were offered for improving the construct validity of measures intended to represent an orientation to an RH or LH function.
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