Student perception of teaching effectiveness: development and validation of the Evaluation of Teaching Competencies Scale (ETCS)

Abstract

A major criticism of student evaluations of teaching is that they do not reflect student perspectives. Using critical incidents job analysis, students identified nine teaching effectiveness competencies: communication, availability, creativity, individual consideration, social awareness, feedback, professionalism, conscientiousness and problem‐solving. The behaviourally anchored Evaluation of Teaching Competencies Scale is a highly reliable (alpha = .94), unidimensional measure that correlated strongly with an instructor‐related composite of the Students’ Evaluation of Educational Quality (SEEQ, r = .72), but not to a SEEQ composite related to instructor assigned work (r = .04, N = 195). The results are discussed in the context of other measures of teaching effectiveness and transformational leadership theory.

Keywords:

• student evaluation of teaching
• teaching effectiveness
• leadership
• teaching competencies

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the following students who were involved in various stages of this project: Paul Angelopoulos, Sebastien Blanc, Cinthia Branco, Sebastien Houde, Carla MacLean, Chris Mahar, Tammy Mahar, Amy McMurray, Marie‐Helene Michaud, Martin Royal, Karene Saad and Mike Teed. We could have not done this research without their dedicated participation.

Notes

1. The percentage of female undergraduate participants, 63%, is consistent with the percentage of women in arts programmes, 60% and slightly higher than the overall university enrolment of 55%.