Agreement between Students’ and Their Instructors’ Perceived Use of Good Practices in Undergraduate Education: Self-Reflections in Developmental Mathematics Classrooms

Amy G Nabors,Linda Zi̇entek

doi:10.52597/buje.994872

Abstract

Best practices in undergraduate classrooms have been identified. However research on the congruence between practices of faculty members and their students is lacking. In this study, confidence intervals were used as a mechanism to compare responses of three developmental mathematics instructors and their students on a subset of items from the Seven Principles Faculty and Student Inventories. Patterns observed in the confidence intervals indicated that, among the items studied, (a) there were consistent behaviors among students across classes and (b) students’ and instructors’ perceptions were not in agreement on several items. Future studies could compare all items or conduct observations to measure congruency.

Highlights

We investigated the agreement between developmental mathematics instructor’s responses to a subset of items from the Seven Principles of Good Practice in Undergraduate Education (Chickering & Gamson, 1987) and their students’ reflections of their practices on comparable items from the Seven Principles Student Inventory (Oberst, 1995)
According to Spinney (2017), selfreflection is the process of seeking insight about your behaviors, value, knowledge, and growth whereas self-evaluation is the process of studying your performance in an effort to improve skills
This study focused on Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) seven principles for undergraduate education with a sample of developmental mathematics students and their instructors

Summary

Introduction

Organization for Student Success (NOSS), defined developmental education as “... Self-assessment is a tool used for self-improvement (Ross & Bruce, 2007) that can come in the form of self-reflection or self-evaluation. According to Spinney (2017), selfreflection is the process of seeking insight about your behaviors, value, knowledge, and growth whereas self-evaluation is the process of studying your performance in an effort to improve skills. Dewey (1997) defined self-reflection in the context of education as an active, persistent, and careful consideration of a belief or knowledge. Dewey (1997) elevated the area of self-reflection when he highlighted the impact it has on other areas such as critical thinking and personal and/or professional development Self-reflection is considered an indispensable component of the learning process (Clarke et al, 2018). Dewey (1997) defined self-reflection in the context of education as an active, persistent, and careful consideration of a belief or knowledge. Dewey (1997) elevated the area of self-reflection when he highlighted the impact it has on other areas such as critical thinking and personal and/or professional development

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Conclusion