The Relationship between Consistency of Instructor Assigned Freshmen English Grades with Overall Grades and Instructor Effectiveness

Abstract

A CRITICAL AREA of interest in educational research is that of teaching effectiveness. Mc Keachie (4) has reviewed and discussed problems of research on teaching at the higher education level and has pointed out difficulties in obtaining overall indices of teaching effectiveness. It would be highly desirable, however, to have available relatively simple, single indices whose efficacy could be empirically determined. Ratings of var ious types have frequently been used to this end, but Patton and Meyer (5) among others have noted serious limitations in their use. In a report concerning 584 institutions of higher learning, Gustad (2) indicated that some of the reporting institutions used grades assigned by instructors as one source of data for the evaluation of instruction. Lehmann (3) pointed out that the correlation between grades and ability may be used in evaluating instruc tion. Thus, some precedent exists for relating grades to other variables in attempts to assess instructor effectiveness. The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between two measures taken on in structors of freshman college English: 1) the consistency of the instructor's grades with over all grade-point averages earned by the same stu dents and 2) the instructor's teaching effective ness. Its results may thus be useful in providing data concerning the grading practices of college English instructors and in suggesting the use fulness of such data for further purposes. It was felt that first-quarter English marks offered certain unique and advantageous char acteristics for study. Primarily, English marks represent the attainment of objectives that seem to have a high degree of relevance to achieve ment in a wide range of other course work. Logically, instructional objectives in English re lating to skill in reading and expression pervade much of the curriculum. Thus, English achieve ment can be assumed to be a major factor in gen eral college achievement. On this basis, it can be argued that for large amounts of data, significant, positive correlations between student English grades and overall grade-point averages are desirable. Second, English is a general, if not universal, college course requirement. Finally, the quality of first-course English instruction is rela tively heterogeneous.