Theoretical models have suggested that teachers' motivational beliefs relate to various student academic outcomes through particular teaching practices, and that teachers' motivational beliefs and teaching practices are reciprocally interrelated. However, these relations have rarely been tested in longitudinal work. We extend previous research by…

Previous research provides evidence that ratings from students and external observers can deliver reliable and valid measures of teaching quality. However, there is still a lack of research on how stable these measures are across time and classes, which is particularly important when they are used for evaluations. We addressed this issue in 3…

According to dimensional comparison theory (DCT), students evaluate their ability in one domain (e.g., math) by comparing their achievement in that domain with their achievement in other domains (e.g., English). Primarily in research on students' academic self-concept, these comparison processes have been found to lead to positive associations…

The internal/external frame of reference model (I/E model) posits that individuals' achievement-related self-concepts are formed through social comparisons (e.g., self vs. peers) within academic domains and dimensional comparisons (e.g., math vs. verbal) between distinct domains. A large body of research has supported the theorized pattern of…

Student ratings of teaching quality have been shown to be powerful predictors of important academic outcome variables. This is the case despite the fact that students from the same classroom can perceive teaching quality quite differently in their own idiosyncratic ways. These differences among students in the same classroom are typically…

In their study about the Dr. Fox lecture, Naftulin, Ware, and Donnelly (1973) claimed that an expressive speaker who delivered an attractive lecture devoid of any content could seduce students into believing that they had learned something significant. Over the decades, the study has been (and still is) cited hundreds of times and used by…

Prior research has shown that the agreement between teacher and student ratings of instructional quality is, at best, moderate, and the associations between measures of instructional quality and outcomes such as standardized achievement are typically small and somewhat mixed across both perspectives. One explanation for these low-to-moderate…

Recently graduated university students from all Australian Universities rate their overall departmental and university experiences (DUEs), and their responses (N = 44,932, 41 institutions) are used by the government to benchmark departments and universities. We evaluate this DUE strategy of rating overall departments and universities rather than…

This study extends previous research on teachers' self-efficacy by exploring reciprocal effects of teachers' self-efficacy and instructional quality in a longitudinal panel study. The study design combined a self-report measure of teacher self-efficacy with teacher and student ratings of instructional quality (assessing cognitive activation,…

Do university teachers, like good wine, improve with age? The purpose of this methodological/substantive study is to apply a multiple-level growth modeling approach to the long-term stability of students' evaluations of teaching effectiveness (SETs). For a diverse cohort of 195 teachers who were evaluated continuously over 13 years (6,024 classes,…

Abrami and d'Apollonia dispute previous findings of the multidimensionality of students' evaluations of teaching effectiveness, but their analysis has several weaknesses, particularly in the failure to distinguish between exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. Support for the multidimensional perspective remains strong. (SLD)

Undergraduate students participated in a study to measure the effect of variables influencing teacher rating. Overall, students rated their instructors more positively when they believed evaluation was sponsored by the faculty rather than a student group. (Author/DEP)

After factor analyzing teacher evaluations by students into three dimensions, research indicates significant relationships between expected grade and course effectiveness with a non-bias interpretation, and teacher effectiveness and course difficulty with a bias interpretation. The effects of course type on grades and ratings are discussed with…

College students using teacher's reputation or ability to select sections congregated in certain sections and rated instructors more favorably than classmates using other criteria, endangering previous teacher rating form validation studies which failed to randomize students to classes. (Author/BW)

Student evaluations of faculty teaching performance at the undergraduate level were examined in an experiment which used anonymous and nonanonymous settings as one factor and the professor being rated as a second factor. Both main effects were significant with marginal significance for the interaction. (JKS)