The metrification of teaching: student evaluation of teaching in the United States, Germany and Colombia

ABSTRACT

By means of a systematic comparison of three countries we investigate the origins and conditions for the diffusion of student evaluation of teaching (SET). We found that (a) SET is present cross-nationally; (b) SET was initiated in the US during the 1950s by students and adopted in the 1970s by universities, while German and Colombian universities started implementing SET during the 2000s; and that (c) common cultural elements for adopting SET include increasing accountability, competition and student empowerment. Concerns for academic freedom in Germany and faculty diversity in the US influence SET's diffusion and implementation. Our findings test the neo-institutional proposition about the diffusion of similar evaluation practices into university teaching. We also extend theoretical interpretations of the transfer of practices by positioning SET in a global culture that has recently been aiming to balance technocratic measurements of teaching with local concerns about academic freedom and increasing concerns about diversity.

摘要

通过对三个国家的系统比较，我们调查了学生评价教学（即学生评教）的起源和传播条件。我们发现：（1）学生评教跨国存在；（2）学生评教于20世纪中叶由美国学生发起，并于70年代为美国大学所采用，而德国和哥伦比亚的大学则是从本世纪初开始实施；以及（3）促使采用学生评教的共同文化要素包含渐增的问责制、竞争以及学生赋权。德国大学对学术自由的关注以及美国大学对学部多样性的考量影响学生评教的传播与实施。我们的发现验证了新制度主义关于类似评价实践在大学教学中传播的论点。此外，通过将学生评教置于一种全球文化中，我们延展了对这一实践转移的理论诠释，这种文化近期寻求平衡对教学的技术性测量和本土对学术自由与渐增的多样性的考量。

KEYWORDS:

• Student evaluation of teaching
• teaching evaluation
• quality assurance
• institutional evaluation
• neo-institutionalism
• regional characteristics
• social change

关键词:

• 学生评价教学
• 教学评价
• 质量保证
• 制度评估
• 新制度主义
• 区域特征
• 社会变化

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Francisco Ramirez for all his support during the research process. Many thanks to Katherine Bird for proofreading this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation through a Research Scholarship to Pedro Pineda [number Az. 40.18.0.003SO].

Notes on contributors

Pedro Pineda

Pedro Pineda (Dr. Phil., Humboldt University of Berlin) is preparing his habilitation thesis at INCHER while working as a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the German Centre for Higher Education Research and Science Studies (DZHW). From 2018-2020 he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at INCHER on a project about the institutionalization of teaching student evaluations in Germany, the United States and Colombia. He was previously Assistant Professor in Bogotá at the Universidad de los Andes and the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. Dr. Pineda specializes in the fields of comparative higher education research, comparative education and sociology of education.

Tim Seidenschnur

Tim Seidenschnur (Dr. Phil., University of Kassel) is Research Associate at the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER) where he coordinates the thematic area “Governance and Organization”. He joined INCHER since 2015. Previously he worked at the University of Würzburg as a Research Associate and as a lecturer at the University of Kassel.