Dear Mr Fasih it is true that impartial evaluation of the teacher is not only helpful to the professional development of the teacher but contribute to the efficacy of the whole teaching system and all concerned & connected.

Though a teacher is evaluated every day and in every class wherein self assessment comes at the core. 

However, in my opinion, if you are particularly concerned about the assessment time it should be middle of the session wherein both the teacher and the taught have adapted to the situation. As in this situation all the assessing parties are in a better position of assessment.

For more details on allied issues you please refer to some of my papers on RG.

Hello,

One would need to know the purpose of the evaluation before one could suggest an appropriate time - formative or summative, it should be impartial otherwise it's a poor survey.

Peer Observation can be very effective if properly conducted to improve teaching especially if a teacher is observed by an experienced colleague.   

Hi Michael, 

The evaluation is aimed to enhance teachers' professional development. From this perspective it is formative assessment of teachers. My query is about the time of survey. Actually there is a risk that the students expect grades and having this expectation they evaluate the teacher performance. In order to avoid this factor, I have raised the question of time appropriateness regarding evaluation. 

regards,

It is known that, depending on the moment, there are four types of evaluation: initial, ongoing or procedural, end and deferred. I think that especially the first three types are fundamental, initial to assess student's previous knowledge and be able to build on them new knowledge. The continuous or progressive to determine the evolution of the student for the competences to be acquired and also to modulate our teaching process. And finally the final to determine exactly what the student has acquired.

I believe that in these three moments the teacher can be objective in evaluating long as the evaluation criteria are clearly defined within each subject and each activity taking place. To do this, I believe that the most useful are the fields which, although they are initially expensive to develop, facilitate and expedite the task of evaluating.

Greetings.

Hello Fasih,

Soft marking in the expectation of a good survey result is a genuine concern and has been addressed extensively in the literature. You might want to look at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02602938.2013.831809 for a recent (2014) review of the subject.

There are some ways you can reduce the likelihood of it happening though:

- make the surveys anonymous

- let the students know that the results of the survey won't be released to the teacher until after the exam results have been published

- have the surveys administered in class by someone other than the teacher.

As to your original question about timing for formative surveys, we deliver our surveys towards the end of the module to ensure that the students have had as much exposure to the teacher as possible - that way they have a better chance of providing an informed response.

Hope that helps.

regards

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02602938.2013.831809#.VOUA6C6gbO1

I believe that in order to evaluate teachers, you should use 4 types of evaluation:

1. The principal's evaluation that should be done twice a year: 3 months after the beginning of the year, and one two months before the school year ends.

2. Peer evaluation at the middle of the year, including observation of 1-2 classes.

3.Self review: could be done any time of year and can include a self-efficacy questionnaire, that will help compare with other sources 

4. Student feedback: should be done at the mid term.

All these 4 elements should be summed up to one coherent evaluation and presented to the teacher by the principal at least two months before the end of the year. This will enable him to improve if necessary and prepare himself for the next academic year.

you can also see:

• A Multilevel Factor Analysis of Students' Evaluations of Teaching http://epm.sagepub.com/content/65/2/272
• Rick Stiggins and Dan Duke, Effective Instructional Leadership Requires Assessment Leadership, Phi Delta Kappan, Vol. 90, No. 04,
• Sebastian Stehle , Birgit Spinath , Martina Kadmon (2012). Measuring Teaching Effectiveness: Correspondence

Between Students’ Evaluations of Teaching and Different

Measures of Student Learning.Res High Educ (2012) 53:888–904

December 2008, pp. 285-291.

Thanks a lot for giving you feedback which is really helpful. 

Regards,

Hi Fasih,

I am interested in the notion of impartiality. Is it possible for people to be impartial? How are you seeking to make the evaluation impartial? 

Kevin

I agree with Ms. Fisher that different sources of information are required to get reliable results. In our Program we ask students to respond a questionnaire in the seventh week of  term to identify any weaknesses, and if necessary the Head of the Program talks to the teacher and encourages him/her to overcome the flaws. I  think at this time information might not be biased.

I read this question and the accompanying responses to mean at what point in the semester are students most likely to provide the most impartial measures. Since teaching is a relational activity and the success in learning from a teacher often has a deep relational component, student evaluations of teachers are unlikely to ever be impartial. Research from the 1980s has shown that student evaluation of university professors can be attributed to institutional level issues, college or department issues,students' belief they learned something, and  student's perception of his/her relationship with the teacher. This same research argued that the contribution of each on an item by item basis would vary from respondent to respondent and question to question. Thus, what student evaluations tell us about student teaching and learning are relationship and belief driven and reveal not much about the quality of the teaching of an individual professor.

One of my colleagues who taught a course that students hated but were required to take had students do the course evaluations the first thing on the first day of the course then had the students evaluate the course at the end of the course. Her overall evaluations for the course had typically fallen about 2.8 on a 4 pt scale with 3 as the mean for the university. She found that on day one of the course students evaluated her teaching and the course at 1 thus her teaching seemed to have a dramatic change on the survey response. My favorite conception of student evaluations argues they are  ritual rather than valid or reliable something we do to suggest we care about teaching. Finally I wonder about the science behind all this. Since we measure a professor's performance in teaching one group of teachers, ask the teacher to make adjustments to their teaching in response to the evaluations of that group and then we measure their success on a different group and yet treat the difference as growth in teaching and the groups as equivalent.

Evaluation, by its vey nature, must be associated with specific outcomes. So, it is difficult to specify any one time as best for evaluation. The key points revolve around

1. Why do you want to evaluate? E.g. To see the extent that teachers have had impact on learner progression

2. What? What particular skill or attribute do you hope to evaluate or want the teachers to evaluate? Obviously, this can only happen if the teachers have already acquired this skill/attribute and have been in a situation to demonstrate this acquisition in theory and practice.

In my view, it is best to use the what and why as key drivers in deciding when to evaluate. I say this noting that evaluation can be carried out by both the self and others. For example, obvious but relevant, when do you evaluate a lesson? Of course, after the lesson has been delivered.

In Iran, we evaluate at the end of semester. I think this time is suitable.

When you have the data to indicate achievement or non-achievement of targets and before the bureaucracy needs to know in order to pay any increment that might be due.  

Dear Fasih,

I must echo the concerns of Kevin regarding impartiality. I believe this to be unattainable. To be impartial one must suspend all beliefs one has in haw one ought to teach, suspend all ones experience in front of the class and evaluate another colleague?

I believe in assessments and I also believe they are an important part of development but let us not fool ourselves into believing they are impartial.

Douglas