The relationship between trainees’ evaluation of teaching and trainee performance among Norwegian executive students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to explore the relationship between students’ reactions to teaching and their consequent performance as measured by course grades. Reactions to teaching were reported by 189 adult part‐time students enrolled in postgraduate studies over two consecutive academic semesters across six different study programs in a large Norwegian training institution. These students’ reactions to teaching were then assessed in relation to their consequent performance, in terms of their individual final course exam grades. The results showed that students’ reactions to teaching were unrelated to their consequent course performance. Implications for practice and directions for future research are discussed.

Keywords:

• executive education
• trainee reactions
• trainee performance

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and helpful comments and advice.

Notes

1. The amount corresponds to approximately US$3.5 billion.

2. One of our anonymous reviewers suggested that we should test whether the relationship between perceptions of good teaching and trainee performance differed in terms of student gender. We ran t tests and split sample analyses in order to test for such differences. The t test revealed no significant differences in terms of perceptions of good teaching between male and female students. A non‐significant relationship between trainee perceptions of teaching and performance was found for female and male students when assessed separately.

3. We thank one of the anonymous reviewers for pointing to this potential explanation for the low correlation.