The following study explores teachers’ views surrounding the role of the student evaluation of teaching and teachers within an international school environment. This is a qualitative study through which the teachers were invited to respond to semi-structured interview questions. The guiding questions explored their personal beliefs surrounding the evaluation of teachers by students, the role of student evaluations in the formal teacher evaluation process, and the perceived value of student evaluations to teacher development. The teachers are all experienced, from across disciplines, and they stem from Australia, Canada, the US, and the UK. A number of themes emerged in the findings that indicated concern surrounding the reliability and validity of the surveys, and the capacity of international students to interpret and complete the survey instruments accurately. Overall, teachers did not perceive the current student evaluations as useful to their teaching, and they had a range of ideas on how the process could be improved, including the need for surveys to be context specific, the need for external professionals to administer and oversee the process, the need to engage students in dialogue surrounding the evaluation process, and the need for the student evaluations to play more of a transparent and coherent role in teacher evaluation and professional development.

Author: Mary C. Kelly

Published in: Canada International Conference on Education, 2022

• Date of Conference: 21-23 June, 2022
• DOI: 10.20533/CICE.2022.0025
• Electronic ISBN: 978-1-913572-49-5
• Conference Location: Virtual (Mississauga, Canada)