Student Evaluations of Tertiary Teaching: a Nepalese investigation

Abstract

An investigation is reported which tests the applicability of two American instruments designed to assess tertiary students’ evaluations of teaching effectiveness with 297 Nepalese graduate students. The scales were found to have generally adequate internal consistency reliability coefficients, most of the items were seen to be appropriate, and every item was considered of importance by at least some of the students. In addition, all but the Workload/Difficulty items clearly differentiated between ‘good’ and ‘poor’ lecturers. Further analysis failed to support the convergent and discriminant validity of three of the scales hypothesised to measure similar or dissimilar components of effective teaching. Factor analysis confirmed this finding as a strong main factor of teaching effectiveness plus minor factors referring to workload difficulty and grading were obtained. This research therefore indicated more overlap between aspects of teaching skill and enthusiasm than is evident in Western studies. Taken together with the results of similar investigations in developing countries, there must be doubt about the cross‐cultural validity of a multidimensional model of teaching effectiveness.