8

Identifying the impact of our teaching requires meaningful personal reflection and deep engagement with student perspectives, including data collected regularly in the form of student course ratings.

Teaching scholar Maryellen Weimer describes self-reflection as a process of self-discovery, of “coming to know ourselves as teachers,” and views it as central to faculty growth and change.² She recommends a three-part process distilled in the questions, “Who am I, and what can I become, as a teacher and in the classroom?”: (1) taking detailed stock of what we do when we teach, (2) exploring why we do each of those things, and (3) making discoveries about our instructional identity. Even though the act of reflecting requires us to pause—and even at times look backward—the purpose is not to ruminate but rather to learn and gain insight so we can move forward in an authentic and meaningful way. When we develop a natural disposition to pause and reflect, we can also develop the propensity to have a deeper, more empathic understanding of the lived experiences of others. In the context of equity-minded teaching, acquiring these characteristics means we are not only open to—but actually committed to—regularly learning from and with students, using varied forms of data and evidence.

Lindsay Malcolm-Piqueux and Estela Bensimon, both affiliated with the University of Southern California’s Center for Urban Education (CUE), affirm that engaging with evidence about teaching and learning is key to equity-minded practice because “data can help practitioners to truly understand the nature of problematic inequalities in outcomes.”³ For college faculty, no data source is more readily available than student evaluations of teaching (SETs), sometimes referred to as student ratings of teaching. Likewise, there are few topics more controversial with faculty members than SETs and their use and potential abuse.

Recent headlines tell part of the story: “New Study Could Be Another Nail in the Coffin for the Validity of Student Evaluations of Teaching”; “In Defense (Sort of) of Student Evaluations of Teaching”; “Student Course Evaluations Get an ‘F.’”⁴ Meanwhile, academic organizations have released warnings about overreliance on student evaluations,⁵ and arguments have been made that SETs hurt not only teachers but also students, by helping produce “passive, even contemptuous students who undermine the spirit of the class and lower its quality for everyone.”⁶ We recognize that the fallibility of SETs and the misuse of their data can negatively impact you as a faculty member. We also know the extent of this impact will likely vary based on such factors as your identities, type of faculty position, institution, and so on.

Why, then, have we devoted considerable space to SETs in a guide on equity-minded teaching? Whether we like them or not, SETs are the most widely used way in which colleges and universities gather evidence about student experiences. And, as the title of a Chronicle of Higher Education article makes clear, “Student Evaluations: Feared, Loathed, and Not Going Anywhere,” they endure (for most of us).⁷ Because SETs are so widely used and are part of most institutions’ set policy and routine, administered automatically, their results also tend to be readily available and accessible to instructors. Most importantly, as Tony Knight and Art Pearl write, educational equity increases when students have a voice regarding course pedagogies.⁸ On many, if not most, campuses, SETs are the only systematic opportunity for students to share their voices.

Although we wish institutions weren’t so reliant on SETs for student feedback, we find encouragement and inspiration in faculty efforts to gather their own input. You’ll read about some of these approaches in Unit 9, where we outline varied ways to gather student feedback. Here, we contend that, despite their many shortcomings, SETs are an important source of data about your students’ experiences in your class. Our goal in this unit is thus to suggest how to learn from both your personal reflections and your SET results. We’ll distill key findings from research on SETs, including studies on their potential biases, and explore some of the nuances of their faults to help you put your results into context. The research summary might also help you minimize SETs’ negative influence, not only on your own professional success but also on that of your colleagues with whom you may collaborate, or whom you might mentor or evaluate. Following the research discussion, we’ll share specific recommendations for equity-minded reflection and engagement with SET data, plus we’ll demonstrate how to identify steps for improvement based on what you uncover in this analysis.