Fresh Approaches to the Evaluation of Teaching

Student ratings have long been the primary means of evaluating teaching in higher education, but are they sufficient to meet the increasing demands in public accountability and the changes in learning needs? This volume explores a wide range of alternative approaches to assessing teaching performance and presents methods for documenting and judging teaching that have often been overlooked in the sometimes acrimonious debate about the reliability and validity of student questionnaires. Contributors discuss the underlying issue and principals that affect all forms of evaluation - making links between teaching methods and learning outcomes. They explore the goals and applications of the teaching portfolio, a widely used alternative to the sole reliance on student ratings; and discuss the strength and weaknesses of evaluating teaching through teaching awards. They also examine technology and its importance in automated evaluation systems, the role of formative evaluation in the scholarship of teaching; the role of evaluation in the accreditation of university teachers; and the evaluation of teaching for entire programs, departments, and institutions.
Presenting a concept of interpretive and critical evaluation that considers knowledge about teaching as communicative and emancipatory, this volume is a frank and invigorating analysis of the emerging theories and applications of teaching evaluation. This is the 88th issue of the Jossey-Bass series New Directions for Teaching and Learning.