Performance Evaluation Of University Teachers "teaching Evaluation" Reliability Study

Since the enrolment of colleges and universities was enlarged from 1999, the higher education has turned gradually from the previous"elite education"to public education. With this transform of higher education in China, the quality of teaching therefore became the focus of educational circle as well as the whole society. Evaluation of teaching quality is a difficulty in and abroad, with colleges and universities worldwide endeavoring to seek the effective ways and means to evaluate teaching quality. Among the existing ways, students'evaluation on faculty is a common practice, which is also an important but difficult part in the teaching quality appraisal system of colleges and universities.Nowadays, most colleges and universities, when conducting appraisal for faculty, will attach great importance on the result of students'assessment, but to what extent the result should be taken for judging the overall quality, there is still no reliable foundation or any unified standard. Though colleges and universities have all counted the result into faculty appraisal, since the procedure, methods, and most importantly the main body– student, and many other elements of the assessment can all bear influence on the result, how reliable the result is should be sequentially judged. However, so far as the writer know, there has not been any all-around study on this, and thus no persuasive conclusion has be drawn. Will it be reasonable to directly utilize the result generated in this way into faculty appraisal? Will it be scientific to rely on the result generated in this way to judge the teaching quality? So far, no study has thoroughly addressed these questions.The thesis below constitutes two main parts: One is theoretical study: apart from a brief review of the contents in faculty appraisal, the thesis primarily cards and integrates the historic development, effect and influence, together with domestic and aboard studies on the students'assessments. The other is demonstrative study. Based on the theoretical premises, the influencing factors and reliability of students'assessment have been set as the focus of the study. Through interviewing teachers and students, conducting questionnaire research and analyzing the data, find out the real influencing factors on students'assessment as with their extents respectively. By comparing with the previous studies, finally judge the reliability of students'assessment on faculty.Three conclusions have been drawn via investigation and analysis as shown in the thesis: 1. The results of students'assessment is hardly be affected by the age, title, graduated school, appearance, educational experience or other background factors of the teachers. However, the result, to certain extent, can still be influenced by non-teaching factors as to what extent the teacher respect the student, the relationship formed between teacher and student, the interest and expectation of a student towards certain course and other elements that not belong to the standards for judging teaching quality of a teacher, but nevertheless affected some or even most students'grading of teachers. 2. Students'assessment on faculty is not very reliable. 3. Though the system for students'assessment has been improved gradually, some problems still exist, such as the design of appraisal questionnaire is not rational enough, timing for completing appraisal is not well set, lacks proper publicizing and feedback mechanism in the whole procedure and etc.