Model teaching criteria for psychology: Initial documentation of teachers’ self-reported competency.

Abstract

The Society for the Teaching of Psychology has produced a broad definition of teaching quality called Model Teaching Criteria, but the model has not yet been studied empirically. To fill this gap, college teachers (n ϭ 208) from across the United States self-reported their ability to document the practices represented in the criteria. Teachers, on average, reported meeting the model's 6 general criteria 77% of the time. Teachers reported meeting criteria related to syllabus construction most frequently (91%) and the instructional methods criteria least frequently (69%). The criteria shared positive correlations among themselves even when controlling for separate measures of teaching quality and personality. These results suggest that the Model Teaching Criteria have potential for use in psychology teachers' professional development.

Studying Excellence in Teaching: The Story So Far

“…Not surprisingly, common elements emerge across the many methods of defining and studying teaching excellence. A recent effort aimed to create a coherent summary of these key elements led to the development of Model Teaching Criteria (Boysen, Richmond, and Gurung ; Richmond et al. , ).…”

“…From this iterative and exhaustive process, six broad model teaching criteria with 19 separate subcriteria emerged (Boysen et al. ; Richmond et al. , ).…”

“…First, model teachers maintain expert knowledge in their subject area (Boysen et al. ; Buskist et al., ). Model teachers are most effective when they teach courses in which they have mastered the subject knowledge.…”

“…Self‐training may come in the form of taking courses on how to teach higher education students, attending conferences that focus on pedagogy, or engaging in SoTL (Boysen et al. ).…”

“…Evaluation utility involves providing timely constructive feedback (both summative and formative) to students (Boysen et al. ). Model teachers also engage in SoTL to assess the effectiveness of different instructional methods or assessments and change their practices based on the results of these SoTL assessments.…”