First Advisor

Dennis L. West

Term of Graduation

Spring 1974

Date of Publication

5-30-1974

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Urban Studies

Department

Urban Studies

Language

English

Subjects

Educational evaluation, Teachers -- Rating of

DOI

10.15760/etd.536

Physical Description

1 online resource (101 pages)

Abstract

In order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the complexities which constitute an effective teacher and promote a positive learning climate, a field study methodology was employed to develop an evaluative instrument and to gain descriptive data.

For the purpose of developing an instrument to describe and measure effective teachers, 24 actual learning sessions (classes) were observed, extensive notes taken, and tape recordings were made in order to isolate and describe the behaviors which seemed critical to the situation being studied. This was done by observing the teacher as he taught and the learners while they learned. The teacher was reputed to be an "effective" teacher and was chosen for this reason. At the end of the 24 sessions the perceptions, observations, and inferences of the investigator were measured against those of the learners in the same classroom situation to determine how congruent they were. The results of the study also confirmed the reputation of the teacher.

This information was utilized in the development of scale items. In addition, a second study was designed as a measure of the same teacher, teaching another course, and different students (92 second year medical students). A questionnaire was designed to test the overall effectiveness of the teacher, by the students, and just as important as the rating was the information elicited from the students regarding the teacher and the class process. This was done by way of open ended questions, and the coding of these questions by the investigator. This information too became useful in developing scale items.

Once the scale items were developed by the empirical method described above, the items were pretested on teachers teaching in the same department as the exemplar teacher. The results of the pre-test were statistically significant correlations between the scale items and a student rating of the overall effectiveness of the teachers being studied. The scale items were refined and tested on another larger and different samples of teachers.

The teachers in this sample were teachers at Portland State University in various departments. Thirty teachers participated in the testing of the instrument. This part of the study was designed to compare the instrument developed by the investigator using the process of a trained observer (direct observation) against a study designed and developed by the traditional survey method of scale development which utilized factor analysis to select scale items.

The correlation between the two scales (a split model design was used--one half the students answered the investigator's instrument, one half the students answered the criterion instrument) was nearly perfect.

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Comments

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Persistent Identifier

https://archives.pdx.edu/ds/psu/4571

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