Faculty attitudes about students' ratings of instruction: Enhancing quality management in higher education (Taiwan, China).

摘要

Higher education in Taiwan has experienced rapid growth following education reform, especially at the college level. Quality management of higher education plays a major role for implementing educational reform. The quality of teachers is essential to a successful educational system. Student rating of instruction is one method of evaluating teaching quality. Chinese culture traditionally did not provide for students to challenge their teachers, much less evaluate them. This research sought to determine the attitude held by college teachers toward students' ratings of instruction, particularly in light of traditional Chinese culture.; The findings from this research suggest that college teachers have positive attitudes toward student evaluations when these evaluations are interpreted and used by the teacher for educational improvement in the classroom but not when interpreted and used administratively for employment related decisions. The majority of college teachers, 62.4%, had positive responses about students' ratings of instruction, 80.4% of college teachers believed that students' ratings of instruction provided the opportunity of self-evaluation, 74.4% of the college teachers was serious about the students' ratings of instruction, and 62.2% of the college teachers would use the results to modify teaching.; However, college teachers had negative responses about (a) a good teacher may not get high score, (b) the results can be made public, and (c) the results are inconsistency. College teachers believed that the results of students' ratings of instruction should not be used for re-employment, promotion, and upgrading. This study also found that 16% of college faculties never see the results of their teaching evaluations.; This study made a comparison with previous research done in universities using the same questionnaire. Generally, university educators have slightly higher positive attitudes toward students' ratings of instruction than college educators.