Title: Construction of Effective Teaching Evaluation Scale and Students' Perception of the Characteristics of Effective Teachers
Abstract: Effective teaching is an emerging field and is considered as an important factor of growth and productivity for every country. While exploring the effective teaching methods, researchers adopt different ways of evaluating the efficient teaching. In any case there is always a complex interaction between the teaching strategies, the characteristics of the individual teachers, the topic, and the students. It would be unwise to say that there is any single best approach to teaching as a whole. Research has clearly shown that students rate the quality of their relationships with their teachers as more important than the choice of their instructional strategies (Jarvis, 2005). Given that teaching method and characteristics of a teacher are two pillars of effective teaching, this paper examines the perspective of university students on effective teaching methods and personal/individual characteristics of a teacher that make teaching effective. Construction of an indigenous effective teaching evaluation scale was a preliminary step to develop a valid and reliable tool to assess effective methods in teaching Psychology.No working definition of effective teaching is available. The definition of effective teaching slightly changes with the nature of course/subject. Effective teaching has been defined as an appropriate procedure which enhances the beneficial learning of the student (Centra, 1993). Campbell, Kyriakides, Muijs, and Robinson (2003) defined teacher's effectiveness as the impact of classroom factors on the performance of student. While Westwood (2006) believes that effective teaching is as an approach of providing all the students with utmost opportunities. Thus with maximum opportunities, students get chances to grow and learn more and the welfare of students seems to be pivotal while assessing effective teaching. The effectiveness of teaching methods appears to be dependent on the evaluation of students.Jarvis (2011) denigrated any particular approach to effective teaching, instead he introduced a set of basic principles that he believed to underlie effective learning and teaching:1. Learning should be an active process, which needs teachers' input and high level of students' involvement2. Learning can be enhanced by social interaction with teacher, fellow students, and soft wares. Technologically connected exercises should be encouraged3. Teaching should involve applying research and theory to real life scenarios4. Teaching should develop transferable skills in students to prepare them for exam5. Teaching should develop critical thinking in students.6. Teaching must take account of the diverse needs of students.Teaching methodology and the characteristics of a teacher appeared to be an indispensable part of effective teaching. Recent researches emphasize that a single method cannot be the effective method for all, so a teacher should master a variety of views and strategies in his or her mind to apply in the classroom setting. There is a paradigm shift in teaching from old traditional methods to new pedagogy (Regmi, 2012). The lecture method is probably the most frequently employed teaching technique (Jarvis, 2002), so researches to evaluate the success rate of lecture method seem worthwhile. Since lecture method is considered the most common way of teaching, comparisons have been drawn between the lecture method and other teaching methods to evaluate its usefulness. Beers (2005) conducted a study to evaluate the effect of problem-based learning (PBL) and traditional lecture method on students of nursing school. The results of the study did not show any statistically significant difference between the two teaching methods. In another study, the effectiveness of lecture based teaching (LBT), simulation based teaching (SBT) or a combination of these two was assessed (Brich et al., 2007). All the participants improved in their knowledge and performance in post-training assessment, but only the groups which received training using the simulation based teaching method showed sustained improvement after three months. …
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 2
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