Essay on the Evaluation of Teachers by Students

The students happen to be a very good source of information about teacher quality as they are the group of people with whom teachers work directly as spend most of their time. Important, use of the data can be obtained through student reports about teacher performance. Whenever we think of teacher evaluation we tend to underrate student as a source of teacher development. We can get clues about the teacher with the help of students only.

Students can give us better information about the teacher. The availability of a large number of students as reporters provides high reliability for evaluating many types of teacher performances. The student evaluation of teachers can be justified on the grounds of students as consumers and stakeholders of good teaching.

Major Yools for Yeacher Evaluation by the Students

A teacher can be evaluated properly by a student only. He/she can evaluate the teacher by different norms. On the behalf of different qualities a student can evaluate the teacher. Among these are:

(i) Survey Form:

With the help of survey form a student can evaluate the teacher. The general format of survey form is to have a number of items or statements about the teacher and class or pupil presented with scale to indicate the student rating. Some form contains space for open ended question but they are difficult to interpret. Surveys with a few items are better than long surveys which try to ask too much. We must curious about many things that students may think.

For example, statements can be constructed on various topics like materials, classroom structure, learning, teacher behaviour, transfer of learning outside school etc. Proper instructions have to be given to students regarding anonymity and to write their own opinion, not what other people think of. This survey form is to be distributed to students by a neutral person if possible.

(ii) Interviews:

It can be done during question- answer sessions which can be conducted by a person who is not the teacher, administrator, principal or a fellow teacher at the school. The response of the student can be recorded by the interviewer and a, summary report to be prepared. The interview can be group or individual.

The group interview gives more perspective details and spontaneity. Interviews should involve a large sample of a class rather than the entire group. Group interviews are found to be as valid and reliable as surveys and cost-effective. Individual interview turn out to be more expensive in terms of interviewers’ time, analysis and presentation of results.

What are the Major Problems of Student Evoluation of Teachers?

There are so many problems while evaluation of a teacher by the student. Although students are in a good position to report useful information yet they also have definite limitations so far as judging the quality of teachers is concerned. At school level the students are mature enough. Their judgment might differ those of the adults. Students are not subject-matter experts, therefore they might not be able to judge quality and delivery of content taught in the class.

If there exists any kind of friction in the teacher- student relationship, it may cause problems in assessment. Another problem with student evaluation is that there could be tendency of some teachers to get high ratings. The possibility arises when one aspect of a teacher’s behaviour tends to influence student ratings in other aspects. One common fear that teachers have is that students are too easily influenced by extraneous factors. Although student reports or evaluation have certain constraints, their benefits cannot be underrated at any cost.