Student Ratings and Instructor Self-ratings and Their Relationship to Student Achievement

Abstract

Self-ratings and student ratings of 17 instructors who served as teaching assistants in a large introductory psychology course for two consecutive semesters were compared with student achievement on an externally constructed final examination. Instructor self-ratings and student ratings demonstrated good convergent validity during the second semester, especially on scales measuring student involvement in the classroom, teacher support, and teacher skill. There was significant discriminant validity, but student ratings on all scales were more highly intercorrelated than were the instructor ratings. Student ratings of the instructor’s control of classroom correlated with achievement during the second semester.