The relationships students form with their teachers are critical to children's early school adjustment and later school success. While previous research has relied on teachers' single-point ratings of student-teacher relationship (STR) quality, this study included data provided by children and teachers at two time-points in the kindergarten year.…

Student Evaluation of Teaching surveys (SETs) are used at universities to inform teaching practice and subject design. However, there is increasing concern about the impact of allegations, abuse, and discrimination in survey open text components. Here we discuss the implementation of an automated screening mechanism using a combination of…

Mounting criticism suggests that the recent introduction of a 'gatekeeping' test to improve the quality of teachers in Australia--the Literacy and Numeracy Test for Initial Teacher Education (LANTITE)--has had limited success in achieving its aim. Shaped by a discourse of inputs on how teacher quality might be achieved ('quality in, quality out'),…

A concern for social justice pervades the espoused curriculum of many pre-service teaching programmes, but the extent to which that curriculum influences the beliefs students hold is an open question. With the goal of developing an instrument suitable for evaluating such beliefs at the degree programme level, the present study analysed responses…

Observers of teachers' practice in their classrooms have typically been adults: academic researchers analysing professional practice, school executive members assessing teacher quality and colleagues engaged in professional development and school reform initiatives. This paper discusses observations of teachers' practice from a different vantage…

Purpose: The paper aims to disseminate solutions to common problems in student evaluation processes. It proposes that student evaluation can be applied to quality assurance and improving learning and teaching. The paper presents solutions in the areas of: presenting outcomes as performance indicators, constructing appropriate surveys, improving…

Measurement of the quality of teaching activities is becoming increasingly important since universities are rewarding performance in terms of promotion, awards and bonuses and research is no longer the only key performance indicator. Good teaching is not easy to identify and measure. This paper specifically deals with the issue of good teaching in…

Extended the application of student evaluations of college faculty by using them as the basis for staff development. Staff and student surveys examined each group's priorities for academic and course development. Significant differences were found between the two groups' perceptions. Collaborative student-staff groups developed booklets using…

Evaluated first use of a classroom environment instrument in a Year 1 class. Students responded to both the actual and preferred forms of the inventory. The teacher then implemented selected strategies in a practical attempt to improve the classroom environment in ways preferred by the students. Follow-up assessment indicated that the environment…

This paper reports on part of a cross-national study of science classroom environments in Taiwan and Australia. It focuses on teachers' beliefs about science and science teaching and the effects these beliefs have on the learning environment in the science classroom. Better understanding of this relationship between teacher beliefs and learning…

The prevalent use of student ratings in teaching evaluations, particularly the reliability of such data, has been debated for many years. Reports in the literature indicate that there are many factors influencing student perceptions of teaching. Three of these factors were investigated at the University of Western Australia, namely the broad…

The goals of this study were to explore students' perceptions of how teachers' science teaching matched students' understanding and needs levels, report on the development and validation of a questionnaire to probe these perceptions, and compare junior high school students' perceptions from Taiwan and Australia. Descriptions of both the pilot…

Across OECD countries, governments are seeking policies to make education more effective while searching for additional resources to meet the increasing demand for education. The 2009 edition of "Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators" enables countries to see themselves in the light of other countries' performance. It provides a rich,…

This paper examines student experiences and perceptions of two models of team-teaching employed at a regional Australian university to teach a large undergraduate marketing subject. The two team-teaching models adopted for use in this subject can be characterised by the large number of team members (ten and six) and the relatively low level of…

This research study: (1) looks at what happens in social studies classrooms; and (2) attempts to determine the characteristics and behaviors of effective teachers. To collect data, the researcher observed several high school (grades 9-12) social studies classes since the fall semester of 1991 in the San Francisco (California) Bay Area for 3 months…