ich teachers make a positive and lasting difference, we will not poll pupils; we will examine them. We will not solicit their opinions; we will observe their behavior; to see which of them have been improved and which not" (Hocutt 58).
(2) As Damron pointed puts it, "This salutary effect would be lost if validation testing proved the instrument to be invalid" (Damron "Instructor" 7).
(3) Since the halo effect plays such a prominent role in evaluation research and in this essay, a word or two more about it would be appropriate. The concept is used to refer to the fact that if an individual is viewed as having some good qualities there is a bias towards assuming that the person in question has all good qualities. The flip side is that a person who is seen as being "bad" in one area is likely to be judged "bad" across a broad spectrum of behaviors. Some qualities of an instructor or student perceptions of an instructor have more power than others to create the halo effect. For example, being "charismatic" or "likeable" to students raises scores in almost all other evaluation categories, even those not associated with the instructor. Similarly, if an instructor is not charismatic, he or she is likely to be found wanting in other categories. Coren has argued that "if students are making negative comments on your course organization and your classroom presentation, it is likely that the operation of the halo effect will cause students to generalize their poor ratings to any questions with social and political content" (Coren "Are" 16). Simply put, "if the students do not like an instructor's teaching style, class organization or even the course textbook, when given the opportunity to do so, they are likely to label that instructor as racist, sexist and culturally biased" ("Are" 16).
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