DOCUMENTING AND IMPROVING TEACHING
Section 9
Why Evaluate? Doing an evaluation is like doing research. In both cases, you try to answer important questions about a topic. The key to doing both activities well is identifying the right questions and devising means to answer them. The key questions in evaluating teaching are: “How well am I teaching?” and “Which aspects of my teaching are good and which need to be improved?” The first question attempts to provide a global assessment, while the second is analytical and diagnostic in character. All teachers, even the best, can become more effective. While some continually improve and approach their full potential, others make modest improvements early in their careers and then level off, or sometimes even decline. The primary difference is often that those in the former group continually gather information about their teaching and use it as a basis for improvement. Another reason to evaluate is to document the quality of your teaching for others. The only way to provide such information is to gather it, and that means evaluation. Teaching portfolios are becoming a common way of communicating this information to others. Compiling a portfolio also helps you better understand your own teaching. We also evaluate for our own mental and psychological satisfaction. It's one thing to do a good job and think that it went well; it's quite another, and far more enjoyable, to have solid evidence that we did a good job. That knowledge is possible only if we do a thorough job of evaluation.
Five Sources of Information for Evaluating Teaching* Self-Monitoring All teachers self-monitor whenever they teach. While most of your mental activity may be focused on the presentation or discussion, part of your attention is monitoring: “How is it going?”; “Are they with me?”; “Am I losing them?” and “Are they interested or bored?” The first value of self-monitoring is that it is immediate and constant. You do not have to wait a week or a day or even an hour to get the results. It happens right away; hence, adjustments are possible right away. The second value is that the information generated by self-monitoring is automatically cast in terms that are meaningful to you. You, not someone else, look at the situation and say: “This is what is happening.” You may not always know why it is happening, or what to do about it if it is something you don’t like, but you do have your own sense of what is happening in your teaching. The very strength of self-monitoring, however, may also be its weakness. The kind of information you generate through self-monitoring is subject to your own biases and misinterpretations. Your own blind spots and lack of complete objectivity will cause you at times to misread the responses of students to your teaching. To help counteract the subjectivity of self-monitoring, you may wish to turn to an objective source of information, one without subjective bias.