New academics negotiating communities of practice: learning to swim with the big fish

Abstract

Student evaluations of teaching constitute a recurring theme for debate within the tertiary education literature particularly in relation to validity and reliability. My aim in this paper is to highlight the dependence of student evaluative capabilities on their own beliefs and assumptions about knowledge constituting ‘ways of knowing’, which will differ from one student to the next, and to advocate that this is taken into account when evaluations of teaching are analysed and interpreted. I begin by addressing the nature of the student evaluation process, its current perceived status in higher education and in relation to student expectations in the present consumerist culture from which universities are not exempt. I then go on to focus on cognitive development implicit in higher education, and consider its impact on student expectations and consequent evaluations. Finally, I suggest that promoting an understanding of changing and developing epistemic assumptions of students should be an essential component of the explicit curriculum to the benefit of both students and lecturing staff, and recommend the exploration of more qualitative approaches to student evaluation.