Teacher personality traits and student instructional ratings in six types of university courses.

Abstract

Colleague ratings of 29 personality traits were studied in relation to student ratings of teaching effectiveness in a sample of 46 psychology teachers. Instructors were evaluated in six different types of university courses, ranging from freshman lecture classes to graduate research seminars. Major findings were as follows: (I) Rated teaching effectiveness varied substantially across different types of courses for a given instructor; (2) teaching effectiveness in each type of course could be predicted with considerable accuracy from colleague ratings of personality; and (3) the specific personality traits contributing to effective teaching differed markedly for different course types. It was concluded that psychology instructors tend to be differentially suited to different types of courses and furthermore that the compatibility of instructors to courses is determined in part by personality characteristics. Student ratings have gained widespread acceptance over the past 20 years as a measure of teaching effectiveness in North American colleges and universities. This trend has resulted in part from political factors and in part from research showing that student ratings can provide reliable and valid information on certain aspects of university teaching. Although findings are sometimes contradictory, the weight of evidence suggests that student ratings of a given instructor are reasonably stable across items, raters, and time periods; are affected to only a minor extent by extraneous factors such as class size and severity of grading; are consistent with comparable ratings made by alumni, colleagues, and trained classroom observers; and most important of all, are significantly correlated with more objective measures of teaching effectiveness, such as student performance on standardized examina