Yi-Guang Lin

Student Ratings of Teacher Effectiveness: Validity Studies

Within the past four decades student opinions of teaching have been gathered as a source of data on teaching effectiveness. In connection with studies of the interaction of teaching methods and student motives in determining achievement, the Michigan researchers have had continuing interest in the use of student ratings of teacher effectiveness (e.g., McKeachie, 1957; McKeachie and Solomon, 1958; Carney and McKeachie, 1966). Certain stable dimensions of teaching as rated by students (Isaacson, et al., 1964) and personality characteristics of teachers related to effectiveness (Isaacson, et al., 1963) have been established. More recently we have been concerned with determining the validity of the ratings in terms of criteria of student achievement.

College Student Intrinsic and/or Extrinsic Motivation and Learning.

Abstract How do extrinsic and intrinsic motives affect learning? We predicted that they would not be additive but rather that there would be interactive or curvilinear effects. Extrinsic and intrinsic goal orientation scales were administered to 13 classes—six psychology classes (two in Korea), three biology classes, three English classes, and one sociology class in a liberal arts college, a comprehensive university, and a community college. As predicted, students in the mid-third of the distribution in motivation for grades (extrinsic) who were high in intrinsic motivation achieved better grades than students with higher or lower extrinsic motivation.

Teaching a Course in Learning to Learn

Teaching students to be life-long learners is an important goal of higher education. Students need to be taught explicitly how to use learning strategies to achieve this goal. We have designed a course to teach college students a variety of learning strategies. The course provides instruction in theory and research in cognitive psychology and in the application of learning strategies for studying. Topics covered include learning from lectures, texts, and discussions; memory models and strategies; motivation; writing skills; test-taking strategies; problem solving; and self-management. The course promises to be a useful approach to teaching learning strategies.

An Experimental Investigation of Factors Affecting University Promotion Decisions: A Brief Report.

Current pressures for use of student ratings focus heavily on their use as evidence about teaching effectiveness for decisions about faculty promotions or salary increases. Hind [2] reports that Stanford faculty members perceive teaching as having much less weight than research in influencing decisions about promotion and salary. They believe that teaching should have more weight (but still not as much as research). They recognize student ratings as a source of relevant data. Thus there is evidence that faculty members (at least at Stanford) will accept input from student ratings in the personnel decision-making process. Miller [3] indicates that student ratings are a usual part of systems of faculty evaluation. Although data on the validity of student ratings are important in determining whether student ratings should be used, we have no data on how they actually influence decisions. We need to begin to determine what kind of contribution student ratings can make to such decisions. One first step is to determine what information decision makers use from reports of student ratings. The pilot study here reported provided data relevant to the question: Does the type of information provided about teaching competence affect promotion decisions?

Effective Teaching: Facilitative vs. Directive Style

Teachers emphasizing the role of facilitator-person produce students with greater interest in psychology.

Multiple Discriminant Analysis of Student Ratings of College Teachers.

AbstractReports of all published factor analyses of student ratings of college faculty were reviewed to determine what common factors had emerged and to identify items likely to be useful in discrimination between teachers. A 39-item form was administered to students of 18 instructors both at the beginning and end of a semester course. Twenty-four items had been included in the form used earlier by Isaacson et al. (5). The current data and those collected by Isaacson et al. were analyzed by multiple discriminant analysis and the results were compared to those obtained by factor analysis. While results of the analyses were generally similar, the differences between the results of multiple discriminant analysis and factor analysis point to differences between student stereotypes of teacher behavior and differences in actual behavior between teachers. For uses in which the primary concern is to compare one teacher with another, the dimensions derived by multiple discriminant analyses seem likely to be more u...

Self-Scoring: A Self-Monitoring Procedure

Self-scoring is a procedure for encouraging students to self-monitor their performance on classroom achievement tests. In our study, students instructed to predict their score on each test item earned higher scores than did students who were not so instructed.

Sex Similarity in Personality Correlates of Test Anxiety

Sex differences in correlation coefficients between the California Psychological Inventory, Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire scales and Alpert-Haber Achievement Anxiety Test scales were evaluated in four samples of Ss in French (54 males and 156 females), mathematics (124 males and 66 females), and two introductory psychology courses (81 males and 146 females in the first sample and 297 males and 349 females in the second sample). The fact that fewer than 7% of differences were significant at the 5% level in 216 pair-wise comparisons and there were significant correlations between correlation matrices seems to indicate the lack of sex differences in personality correlates of test anxiety.

Cognitive Schemas in Social Perception.

This paper explores the cognitive schemas involved in ingroup and outgroup perceptions of three U. S. religious denominations (Baptists, Lutherans, and Catholics) based on a factor analytically derived rating scale. Two principal techniques are used for assessing these perceptions, that is, Similarity Structure Analysis, SSA, and Procrustean Individual Differences Scaling, PINDIS. The first is used to determine what the within-group and between-group perceptual structures are, while the latter is used to determine communalities among the various structures (stereotypy). Results revealed a high communality between denominational self-perceptions as well as some stereotypic misperceptions of Baptists and Catholics, but not of Lutherans.

The Relationship Between Student-Teacher Compatibility of Cognitive Structure and Student Performance

Four studies were carried out to test Runkel’s hypothesis that compatibility of cognitive structure between teacher and students would facilitate student learning and performance. The obtained results using Runkel’s collinearity method failed to support the hypothesis. For the authors, the results produced a greater reduction of confidence in the method than in the hypothesis.