The reliability of students' evaluation of teaching at secondary school level

Abstract

The Student Evaluation of Teaching (SET), although controversial, is a common practice at the higher education level for faculty appraisals and promotions, but seldom at secondary school level. Concerns have been raised as to whether students are informed and experienced enough to evaluate teachers’ teaching practices in a reliable way and arrive at valid outcomes. The purpose of this research was to explore the reliability of students’ evaluations of mathematics teaching at secondary school level. This research involved eight teachers, and 194 Grade 11 students from eight secondary schools in Bojanala District, North West province in South Africa. A SET questionnaire was developed, validated and used for data collection. The data were analysed by calculating the average deviation index of the students’ evaluations of each teacher per item and the Intraclass Correlation Coefficient (ICC) with SPSS. This was done using one-way random effects, absolute agreement and a multiple raters/measurements model. Both the ADI and ICC values showed a high degree of reliability of the SET. Hence, SET at secondary school level may provide a reliable indication of teachers’ educational practices that might be used for the formative assessment of teachers’ instruction. It can also assist in designing teacher training programmes for pre-service teachers and professional development programmes for in-service teachers.