Research On The Self-study Reports Of Undergraduate Teaching Evaluation

The quality of college teaching has drawn unprecedented great attention from the public since the beginning of mass higher education period in China. The first round of undergraduate teaching evaluation, starting from 2003, is coming to its end. During the undergraduate teaching evaluation, educational theorists and practitioners addressed the issue from various perspectives, but most opinions were macro-analysis or medium-level analysis. With the content analysis method, the present dissertation researches the self-study reports from colleges and universities that took part in the first round of undergraduate teaching evaluation, so as to enhance the understanding of the evaluation from a micro-perspective.Based on the analysis of its policy objectives, evaluation scheme and procedure, the dissertation addresses such issues as the task of evaluation, the self-study reports' nature, functions and written-form requirements. It further develops itself with the content analysis of self-study reports of 12 participating institutions. Analyzing the self-study reports in North Central Association of Colleges and Schools in the U.S., it finally puts forward some suggestions on the undergraduate teaching evaluation in China.Main findings in this research include (1) that officials attach great importance to the self-study and thus draw institutional support from a great number of faculty and administrators; (2) that the self-study is in accordance with the evaluation requirements; (3) that the self-study reports from various institutions are generally complete in content, reasonable in format, and similar in structure; (4) that the self-study reports are generally convincing with abundant information and analysis; but (5) they need improvement in content, structures, types of evidence and approaches to gain evidence.According to the above analysis, with the American experiences of institutional accreditation, the dissertation puts forward suggestions on the improvement of undergraduate teaching evaluation, including the further rectification of evaluation scheme, the suitable orientation of evaluation objectives, the instruction from evaluation organizers. The institutional self-study should establish realistic goals, encourage the initiative-taking behaviors and draw the attention and participation from the public. Further improvements may be made in content, structure, information, requirements of composer of the self-study report and its different versions.