Assessment of college teaching is viewed broadly as the gathering of information for understanding and improving teaching as well as judging its quality. It is seen to play a crucial support role at each stage of instructional development: problem clarification, instructional design/redesign, and field testing and implementation. (MSE)

Guidelines for agricultural education faculty promotion/tenure include (1) assessment of institutional expectations (categorized by teaching or research institution); (2) documentation of teaching, personal attributes, advising, research, publications, committee and association work, time in rank, public service, and graduate student supervision;…

Suggests that tenure, rather than discriminating against minorities and women, benefits these groups by protecting their academic freedom in the classroom and by encouraging depth in scholarship, and also by adding to a democratic balance of power between faculty and administrators. Urges a more open tenure review process to eliminate elements of…

Discusses the importance of the scholarship of application, incentives for such scholarship (e.g., readiness of funding for directly applicable research), ways to evaluate such scholarship (create a more expansive peer-review process), ways to reward such scholarship, and ways to nurture such scholarship (rigorous training in methodology and…

The advent of technology-assisted teaching calls for new thought about evaluating teaching: (1) How do new technology environments affect teaching and learning in ways that have implications for evaluation? (2) How might technology tools help facilitate the representation and evaluation of teaching? (3) What issues should institutions consider in…

Based on Habermas (1971), asserts that knowledge about teaching can be communicative and emancipatory as well as instrumental; these aspects of teaching therefore call for interpretive and critical evaluation. Offers a range of relevant strategies. (EV)

To identify reasons for peer evaluation of college teaching being more honored in rhetoric than in practice, events that occurred on the campus of a prominent public research university are described and suggestions offered as to why peer evaluation is not often practiced. A Committee on Teaching Effectiveness was appointed in response to…

Noting that librarians are integral to the library's performance of its educational function, this report argues that faculty status should be extended to academic librarians. This argument is supported by an excerpt from the "Joint Statement on Faculty Status of College and University Librarians," which was developed by the Association…

Personnel decisionmaking at colleges and universities is discussed, with consideration of ways to avoid legal problems. Two approaches are recommended for universities: develop procedures to minimize the risk of law suits by faculty members and school staff, and provide protection from lawsuits for faculty and staff. Institutional procedures that…

Changing conditions in higher education have altered the attitudes of many participants in the academic evaluation process, as well as the process itself. The overall result has been a trade-off between more useful data gathering, more informed discussion by the participants, and some diffusion of the decision-making power on one hand; and a more…

Four papers from a 1981 conference in England on the management of quality in further education are presented. In "The Management of Quality," Tim Brighouse discusses quantitative versus qualitative measurement of quality in further education advisory input, self-evaluation, leadership, and inservice education. In "Staff…

It is argued that although many institutions conduct informal and unrecorded post-tenure faculty evaluations, these evaluations lack authority, and adoption of a system of regular, formal evaluations would allow institutions to avoid the crisis mentality most adopt concerning planning and staffing. (MSE)

This paper addresses the topic of tenure in community college education and the suspension of tenure in most collective bargaining agreements. It proposes a five-step process to be included within any just cause (incompetence or misconduct) and termination sections of collective bargaining language. Professors who work under collective bargaining…

Nine observations on an article published in the September 1982 "ABCA Bulletin" deal with the quality of college-level technical writing programs and the competency of teachers involved in those programs. (AEA)

In answer to why faculty and administrators rely on quantification of faculty performance (i.e., productivity measures), two reasons are given: (1) it is the only evaluation that is persuasive to a democratic audience (the public); and (2) it is better than none at all. (MSE)