Search results

Through the perspectives of a project director/principal investigator and external evaluator, this chapter explores the methods, strategies, and processes used to design and conduct ongoing, comprehensive evaluation of the Math and Science Teacher Initiatives at California State University, Dominguez Hills. Initiatives include an undergraduate program for students interested in STEM teaching careers, multiple alternative route programs to teacher certification in math and science and a fellowship program for master science teachers. Using a collaborative evaluation framework (O’Sullivan, 2004), the authors highlight the benefits of conducting multiprogram evaluation from a collaborative lens and describe the systematic processes used to engage stakeholders, from the design phase of the evaluation through data collection, analysis, and reporting of participant impact and outcomes. The strengths of the program and evaluation approach, along with specific strategies and methods utilized, will be explored. The chapter will conclude with challenges, lessons learned, and best practices, as well as implications for the field of teacher education and leadership within a STEM context.

Quality-Oriented Education (su zhi jiao yu) is a national education reform initiative that presents ongoing opportunities and challenges to schools, local bureaus of education, and the overall educational system in China today. This chapter seeks to gain insight into if and how Quality-Oriented Education, 10 years into its enactment, has taken root in practice. We posit that a reform agenda is best manifested through well-aligned and operable standards for school effectiveness. We introduce the policy-driven definition for school effectiveness and an evaluation framework depicting the intended focus of Quality-Oriented Education. Using an iterative and inductive process for content analysis, we compare the policy-driven framework with the coding results of a 2009 national inventory of actual school evaluation schemes in 91 Chinese school districts. Our review points out that the new mission of Quality-Oriented Education advocates educational equity, curriculum reform, and systemic support for school-based management. However, at the operational level, there are great variations in terms of content domain, focus, and function among school evaluation schemes with notable regional differences. Furthermore, schools are still caught between the existing system that measures school performance by achievement and the intended accountability scheme that calls for enhanced student ability. This chapter adds to the empirical foundation for the development of a new framework that not only captures the spirit of the national educational reform but also is informed of the developmental needs of schools in drastically different geo-economical and social conditions.

Analyzing educational evaluation not only implies investigating its goals, methods, and dimensions, but also studying the rationale behind it. The present contribution relates this rationale to the interests and the goals set by the agents involved in the formulation and implementation of educational evaluation. When it comes to the evaluation of higher education in Brazil, the specific topic of this chapter, those agents are not restricted to the scope of public departments and boards of education; also included are national and international companies as well as inter- and supranational organizations that directly or indirectly set up quality and efficiency standards for educational processes. Particularly, the rationale and the goals of the higher education evaluation models developed in Brazil from the 1970s up to the present will be focused on, highlighting the close relationship between educational assessment and educational regulation.

Although educators would likely agree that values and ethics are important in all disciplines, they have particular importance for practice-oriented fields. These applied professionals need to solve complex social problems that require the application of ethical standards and value perspectives. While the importance of value-engaged practice is known to the applied field, there is little research and conversation about how values can be integrated into teaching. This chapter synthesizes values-education approaches in various practice-based disciplines such as public administration (PA), program evaluation, social work, and public health. This chapter draws from empirical and theoretical works as well as the authors' experiences developing, participating in, and conducting values-based research on professionals and professional education.

This work addresses how consumer perceptions of quality may be influenced by the composition of competition. I develop a theoretical framework that explains how consumer evaluations of quality can be negatively impacted by a product's stylistic similarity to popular competitors. These issues are examined empirically using more than 75,000 online consumer evaluations, from the evaluation aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, of 123 feature films released in the United States during 2007. Results suggest that during a movie's opening week, movies that are stylistically similar to the top-performing box office movie are evaluated less favorably. Additional analyses indicate that this negative effect may persist in later periods due to social conformity pressures, and that there is reduced demand for those movies that are stylistically similar to the top box office performer. This article contributes to the broader literature in strategic management by depicting how stylistic features of competitors can affect consumer behaviour and perceptions of quality in markets. This work also suggests managerial implications for entry-timing decisions and positioning choices.

Purpose – The author examines the implementation and characteristics of teacher evaluation and explores their associations with improvement in teachers’ practice of constructivist instruction.Methodology – This quantitative study uses statewide longitudinal Teachers’ Opportunity to Learn survey data collected in 2009 and 2010 from middle school mathematics teachers in Missouri and estimates a series of value-added models with two-level Hierarchical Linear Modeling.Findings – Teachers in this study were mainly evaluated by principals who conducted classroom observations and held face-to-face meetings to evaluate teaching practice and professional development activities. The study provides empirical evidence and support for the use of multiple evaluators with multiple evaluation data and outcomes in teacher evaluation. Additionally, it highlights the potential benefits of focusing on teachers’ instructional data instead of student achievement in teacher evaluation in order to improve their teaching practice.Research limitations – This study focused on middle school mathematics teachers in a single state in the United States. Whether these findings can be generalized to teachers of other subject areas or grades, or to states with different policy contexts, or to countries with country-specific structural, cultural, and social differences is unknown.Value – This study is the first effort to systematically examine teacher evaluation practices across a single state and provide empirical evidence on the relationships between the implementation characteristics of teacher evaluation and improvement in teachers’ instructional practice. Findings of this study provide school, district, state, federal, and international policymakers and administrators with important, up-to-date information on teacher evaluation at the middle-school level in the United States.

Because of the potential cost savings that online teaching evaluations can deliver, many universities are converting their student evaluations of teaching to this mode of administration. In this study, we examine the effects of transitioning administration of student evaluations from paper-and-pencil to online. We use data from accounting and other departments in the College of Business Administration of a large private, research university that converted from paper to online administration of teaching evaluations. We examine the average teaching effectiveness rating and response rate for instructors who taught the same course before and after the conversion. In addition, we survey a sample of accounting students to investigate their responses to online teaching evaluations. We find a significant increase in the average effectiveness rating and a significant decrease in response rate. Furthermore, we find that those instructors with lower ratings under the paper administration experience the greatest increase in ratings when the evaluations are converted to online administration. In a follow-up survey, we find that students who are highly motivated and have higher grade point averages are more likely to complete and provide higher evaluations with the online administration. We discuss the implications of our results to accounting and business education literature.

Most universities have relied on student evaluations as a source of evidence in their assessment of teaching performance. However, a complete evaluation of all dimensions of a faculty member's teaching requires multiple sources of evidence. The purpose of this chapter is to identify the sources of evidence that accounting chairs report they currently use to assess teaching. Calderon and Green first examined this issue in their 1997 study. However, their results may be outdated due to changes in accreditation requirements, teaching delivery methods, and the continued evolution of assessment tools. Responding department chairs report that peer observation followed by course syllabus, exams given in class, and instructor course notes are the most frequently used evidence types, with an average of 3.16 sources beyond student evaluations. The source and quantity of evidence vary across different types of institutions. While Calderon and Green reported that most schools use ad hoc and subjective sources of evidence, respondents in this study focus more on instructor-supplied materials and direct evidence from inside the classroom.

This study examines the impact of different Balanced Scorecard (BSC) formats (table, graph without summary measure, graph with a summary measure) on various decision outcomes: performance ratings, perceived informativeness, and decision efficiency.

Using an original case developed by the researchers, a total of 135 individuals participated in the experiment and rated the performance of carwash managers in two different scenarios: one manager excelled financially but failed to meet targets for all other three BSC perspectives and the other manager had the opposite results.

The evaluators rated managerial performance significantly lower in the graph format compared to a table presentation of the BSC. Performance ratings were significantly higher for the scenario where the manager failed to meet only financial perspective targets but exceeded targets for all other nonfinancial BSC perspectives, contrary to the usual predictions based on the financial measure bias. The evaluators reported that informativeness of the BSC was highest in the table or graph without summary measure formats, and, surprisingly, adding a summary measure to the graph format significantly reduced perceived informativeness compared to the table format. Decision efficiency was better for the graph formats (with or without summary measure) than for the table format.

Ours is the first study to compare tables, graphs with and without a summary measure in the context of managerial performance evaluations and to examine their impact on ratings, informativeness, and efficiency. We developed an original case to test the boundaries of the financial measure bias.