Student evaluations of teaching: effects of the Big Five personality traits, grades and the validity hypothesis

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to examine whether the Big Five personality traits and expected student grades relate to student evaluations of teachers and courses at the college level. Extraversion, openness, agreeableness and conscientiousness were found to be personality traits favoured in instructors, whereas neuroticism was not. A significant correlation was found between the students’ expected grades in the course and student evaluations of the course, but not the evaluations of the instructor. When the effect of students’ perceived amount of learning was taken into account, no significant effect of grades was found on teacher ratings. Personality explained variance in teacher and course evaluations over and above grades and perceived learning.

Keywords:

• teaching
• evaluation
• personality
• Big Five
• grades