A tale of two quests: The (almost) non-overlapping research literatures on students' evaluations of secondary-school and university teachers

• Published in: Contemporary educational psychology 2019-07, Vol.58 (July 2019), p.1-18
• Main Authors: Marsh, Herbert W., Dicke, Theresa, Pfeiffer, Mathew
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Educational measurement; Exploratory structural equation modeling; Measurement; Multitrait multimethod techniques; Secondary education; Secondary school students; Secondary school teachers; Structural equation models; Student evaluation of teacher performance; Students' evaluations of teaching; Teaching effectiveness; Test validity
• ISSN: 0361-476X; 1090-2384
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cedpsych.2019.01.011

•Students' evaluations of teaching widely studied in universities but not schools.•Need to integrate research on student ratings of university and school teachers.•University teacher rating instruments demonstrated applicable in school settings.•Secondary students discriminate evaluation factors similar to university students.•Good psychometric support for 15-factor teacher evaluation instrument. Many 1000s of studies have been conducted on the validity and diagnostic usefulness of students' evaluations of university teaching (SET), but there is a surprising lack of research on ratings by secondary students. Integrating these two disparate research areas, we evaluate the appropriateness of university SET instruments to secondary settings. Secondary students evaluated an effective and less effective teacher using items adapted from two university instruments, supplemented by items for secondary settings, and rated the appropriateness and importance of each item (N = 761 sets of ratings of more than 400 teachers, Years 7–11, 10 schools). All items were seen as appropriate and important. Factor analyses of responses to both instruments supported their a priori factor structure, and multitrait-multimethod analyses supported their convergent and discriminant validity. We discuss directions for further research at the secondary level based on the extensive body of research on the reliability, validity, and usefulness of SETs at the university level.