Teaching and Learning, and Their Evaluation, Made Visible

This study set out to reveal how the classroom is a rhetorical situation in order to accomplish two primary goals: first, to examine six study types of student evaluations of teaching: (1) multisection, (2) multitrait-multimethod, (3) bias, (4) laboratory, (5) conceptual structure, and (6) theoretical; and, second, to discover what they actually tell educators about teaching and learning in order to increase quality in, accessibility to, accountability for, and transparency of teaching and learning in higher education. Numerous studies have considered student evaluations of teaching, which produced contradictory results making it a challenge for anyone to determine what these important studies show. The results of this investigation, however, uncovered many reasons for the inherent contradictions in the data through the application of rhetorical theories of kairos and the rhetorical situation.

Autorentext

Regina Clemens Fox teaches English at Arizona State University. She completed her Ph.D. in English Rhetoric in August, 2008, and is now pursuing a doctoral degree in Public Administration. Her primary interests lie in assessment of postsecondary education, and its improvement through the intersection of rhetorical and leadership theories.