A punitive bureaucratic tool or a valuable resource? Using student evaluations to enhance your teaching in

This chapter will explore specific ways in which academic faculty can participate in, use and interpret student evaluations of their teaching. It begins with a critical review of the literature on student evaluations of teaching (SET’s), and it uses evidence based data to demonstrate that there are different categories of typical reactions to both positive and negative student evaluations, some (but not all) of which have a helpful effect on subsequent teaching activity and orientations. It explores Johnson’s (2000) important censure of SET’s exploring to what extent and under what circumstances such systems play into the hands of a bureaucratic, mechanistic climate for which higher educational contexts have been increasingly criticised. It also demonstrates Perry’s (1988) observations that different worlds can exist within the same classroom setting and shows how SET’s can be used to explore and to understand these different worlds in more meaningful ways. The following discussion explores some of the natural defence mechanisms that operate when we review our students ’ evaluations of our teaching. Based on extensive experience with the design, development and implementation of a student evaluation of teaching system, it highlights optimum criteria for using SET’s in order to produce positive teaching and learning outcomes. The chapter concludes with a range of practical strategies that academics can adopt in order to use SET’s as a valuable professional development resource