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Students are the only people who can really evaluate the quality of teaching. Someone with a pre-existing understanding of the material cannot tell whether the
by closeparen 8y ago
Students are the only people who can really evaluate the quality of teaching. Someone with a pre-existing understanding of the material cannot tell whether the class can successfully communicate it to a fresh mind.
A few negative evaluations based on personal disputes can be expected. If there are grudges or strong feelings among a large enough proportion of students to meaningfully influence the aggregates, then something really is wrong.
- pas 8y agoIf other teachers prepared the tests from a shared curriculum for the students, and grading would be by the book (the book would be a living document amended as edge cases arise), then teaching performance could be assessed via the test scores. I have seen this work well for the end of highschool test (prepared every half year), participated on the mailing list purely as an observer (where teachers discussed edge cases - and there was/is a process to get official guidance from the test writer group, but not directly, so that provides a bit of blinding against biases). As long as we try to let teachers cope by themselves (and maybe give them a few TAs in higher ed), and don't make their work testable, we're bound to have wild theories fueled by anecdata.