STUDENT EVALUATIONS

While doing my student teaching in physics during the fall of 2004, I constantly reflected on my own practice. I discussed my own practice with other pre-service science teachers, with my masters teacher, and with my supervisors. While a lot of valuable insights came from these discussions, I also felt that it was critical to hear the voices of my students when reflecting on my performance as a teacher. Part of my self assessment was to solicit student opinions of how the class was going, as well as how they viewed my performance as a teacher. I did this by designing and administering an anonymous survey mid way through the semester.

Before handing out the evaluations to my students I talked with them about how important their honest opinions and feedback were to me. I told them that the evaluations were not a requirement for my teaching program, rather that the information they were providing was to help me become a better teacher. I also provided as much anonymity as possible by telling them not to sign their name, and moving to the back lab table while they filled out the evaluations. My hope was that by making the students feel that they were helping me become a better teacher, and that they may have an influence on how the class proceeded, that they would provide honest and relevant feedback, rather than say things like "I like this class" or "I don't like this class". I got a lot of useful information from the evaluations, some of which I already had a sense for, some of which I did not. I have included 4 sample evaluations which are linked below.

Student evals.pdf