Regular and effective faculty performance reviews are essential for maintaining high educational standards. When higher education institutions lack effective strategies to develop and implement effective faculty evaluation processes, teaching quality and institutional success are negatively impacted. Grounded in Freeman's stakeholder theory and…

Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) gather crucial feedback on student experiences of teaching and learning and have been used for decades to evaluate the quality of teaching and student experience of instruction. In this paper, we make the case for an important improvement to the analysis of SET data that can further refine its interpretation.…

Twenty-five years ago, American sociologist Robert Neelly Bellah (Bellah, et al., 1986: 303) critiqued the growing isolation of intellectuals within universities and called for a return to "social science as public philosophy." Little seems to have changed. My thirty-seven year experience at the University of Alberta suggests that…

Although measures of student ratings of instruction have been developed and examined empirically, students' attitudes about the utility of these ratings have yet to be meaningfully quantified. Using survey responses from 1229 students at a major Canadian university, we developed a psychometrically sound measure of the usefulness of student…

Argues that all models of instructor performance are underdetermined by the data on student evaluation of teaching because decision rules are methodologically flawed. (Contains 53 references.) (PKP)

This paper deals with tenure and promotion in Canadian colleges and universities focusing on the history of judicial/arbitral review of college decision-making, confidentiality versus fairness, and the function of tenure and promotion in postsecondary institutions. (MT)

Considerations for establishing purposes of evaluation are described in view of controversies that focus on justification and use of ratings of instructors as well as attempts to meet demands and ward off pressures for accountability. General models are proposed to serve as guidelines for further development and specification of purposes.…

Investigated the relationship between gender and gender role of students and their "best" university professors. Surveys of Canadian college students indicated that there was a strong relationship between students' gender and gender role and the gender and perceived gender role of their best instructors. Masculinity was valued more by…

This article outlines an action-oriented research project regarding the University of British Columbia's engagement with sustainability. In 1997, the University of British Columbia (UBC) created a sustainability policy that suggests all UBC students should be educated about sustainability. Using data from a series of in-depth interviews the author…

A user's guide for the McGill Evaluation System of instructional evaluation and a bibliography are presented. The guide covers the initial planning of an evaluation, data collection, and making changes in a course or program. The procedure used in the system contains the following sequential steps: describing the purpose of the evaluation,…

Psychological research, it is suggested, has made significant contributions to Canadian higher education. Cognition and learning, the measurement of student abilities, instruction, the evaluation of teaching, student characteristics, the organization and operation of the university, and program evaluation are examined. (Author/MLW)

The discrepancy approach, with a nonmonotonic function, was used in a questionnaire designed to measure the difference between reality as perceived and desires. Reality is described as a student's perception of teacher performance and notion of an ideal teacher performance. The questionnaire deals with both the intensity and direction of a…

A survey of Canadian university policies concerning faculty evaluation found that institutions using evaluation for administrative purposes, with the student questionnaire the primary instrument. Peer review, written reports, and faculty interviews are also used. Differences between francophone and anglophone institutions and between eastern and…

A survey of graduate social work schools in the United States and Canada regarding the use of peer review for tenure and promotion purposes and the specific methods and criteria used is reported, and implications for other areas of professional education are discussed. (MSE)

Existing data on the status of women, both as students and as members of the full-time teaching staff, are examined. Actions taken, being taken, and being planned by the Ontario universities are also reviewed. It is shown that, in general, women do not participate as fully as students as do men, but there is no evidence at the system level to…