19 - Teaching evaluations: feedback that can help and hurt

Summary

It is a serious thing to interfere with another man's life.

– Gilbert Arthur Highet

Teaching evaluations may be a school's or a training department's most controversial subject. Many instructors shy away from giving and getting potentially painful feedback no matter how helpful it might possibly be. Perhaps this is true for the very reason most of us have chosen to be instructors – the autonomy it provides and the understandable knee jerk thought of, “Who are you (they) to tell me what to do and how to do it?” Yet, if we are to continue to improve our teaching skills and to grow in our craft, we need ways of collecting constructive feedback and of acting on it (Newble and Cannon, 2000; Fry et al., 2003; Seldin et al., 1999). Our desire is that instructors craft potentially useful means of getting and giving feedback on teaching, have the courage to receive and give that information, and find the discipline and determination to follow up on the feedback. Indeed, assessing, judging, and taking action based on teaching evaluations is a serious endeavor because it impacts lives.

Why evaluate instructors?

Let's face it, many, if not most, teaching evaluations are done because school administrators require it. Ostensibly, such a requirement is for instructor performance evaluations to determine salary raises, teaching assignments, promotion, tenure, and/or professional development plans. Our experience is that, unless your teaching evaluations are outside the norm, either on the high side or the low side, they have little differential impact on any of those decisions.