A Response to "How to Sacrifice Academic Quality"
Abstract Editors' Note: The above article is a re-joinder to “How to Sacrifice Academic Quality,” which appeared in the Spring 1979 issue of Improving College and University Teaching. The editors welcome thoughtful responses to any article appearing in the journal.
Effective Teacher Evaluation
It is now recognized that there are almost as many learning styles as there are learners. Today's teacher is faced with the difficult task of developing a multidimensional system to evaluate his teaching effectiveness.
Book Review: Characteristics of Teachers, Their Description, Comparison, and Appraisal
Characteristics of Teachers, Their Description, Comparison, and Appraisat by David G. Ryans. Washington, D. C.: American Council on Education, 1960. Pp. 416. $7.50 The Teacher Characteristics Study was one of the most extensive, comprehensive, major programs of long term, coordinated research effort undertaken in the field of education in recent years. It was sponsored by the American Council on Education and was supported financially by The Grant Foundation. The Study was initiated in 1948 and only recently was concluded with the publication of the official report of the research under the authorship of its director and coordinator. I n a foreword, Arthur S. Adams, President of the Council, states that this is a research study in every sense of the phrase, that neither time nor expense had been spared to make it as valid in method as such a study can be, and that the conclusions were stated with careful accuracy. Dr. Adams feels as a consequence that the volume will be disappointing to those who seek a quick, superficial answer to one of the most difficult and complicated questions in education: What makes a good teacher? He comments that that disappointment merely emphasizes the rigorous scholarship of Dr. Ryans and his associates. More than six thousand teachers, in 1700 schools and approximately 450 school systems in the United States, cooperated in the Teacher Characteristics Study (hereafter referred to as the TCS) . The interest and attent,ion of the study were aimed a t the observing and anaIyzing of overt behaviors, or acts of teachers in their classrooms, and at the determination of family groupings or clusters into which these behaviors seemed to fall. The investigations were completed on the basis of complete anonymity of participants, including the school systems and their administrators, the schools and their principals, and the teachers who cooperated in the various phases of the study. Ninety-eight research projects were completed during the years 1948-55; many of these individual projects consisted of multiple research studies. In delimiting the area to be investigated by the TCS, it was in-