ESTABLISHING THE VALIDITY OF A SET OF SUMMATIVE TEACHING PERFORMANCE SCALES

A policy at a New Zealand University to assess lecturers’ teaching performance as an administrative requirement provided for information to be obtained from the chairperson, colleagues, students and the individual being evaluated.

In designing the summative scales to obtain student feedback, four conditions were seen as important for achieving a system acceptable to both lecturers and students. These conditions—length of scale, time to complete the scale, face validity of the scale and the acceptability of the procedures used to distribute the scales, together with the context within which teaching takes place at the Institution, provided constraints to the design of the summative scales.

Following 98 lecturing and 43 course evaluations, the scales were subjected to a principal factor analysis. This analysis showed that the items most strongly related to overall teaching effectiveness, as assessed by students, included the lecturer's ability to communicate ideas and information and to stimulate interest in the subject.

By pooling student ratings from different teaching situations for any one lecture, a Teaching Performance Profile was prepared. This profile increased the reliability and validity of the information obtained. At the same time it provided a summary suitable for combining with the evaluative . information from the other three sources in making a judgement as to the individual's level of teaching competency.