Variance in student ratings of part-time and full-time instructor effectiveness by teaching field and function at a Midwestern community college

The purpose of this research was to investigate whether differences in teaching effectiveness exist between full-time and part-time community college instructors in specific educational disciplines. The study examined faculty representing a number of teaching fields. Past research investigated the quality of instruction of part-time faculty and full-time faculty but did not investigate the possible differences in quality within the two groups;Student evaluations of instructors at one community college provided a measure of teaching effectiveness. Multiple analysis of variance analyzed part-time and full-time instructor groups, using student evaluations of instructor scores for teaching fields. The data set included scores from 12,460 instructor evaluation forms in twenty-five teaching fields. The procedure applied analysis of variance a two levels of instructor employment; full-time and part-time employment;The results indicated a significant difference in student ratings of full-time and part-time instructors. There was a significant interaction when teaching field effect was included with full-time and part-time employment levels. Full-time instructor ratings were different in eight of the twenty-five teaching fields. The difference in student ratings for arts and sciences versus vocational technical fields was not significant. When contrasting arts and sciences and vocational technical fields with the two employment levels, no significant difference resulted. Although part-time instructor ratings were significantly higher than full-time instructor ratings on a collegewide basis, differences in the means were not large. Groups of instructor ratings within the college provided statistical test results which differed from the collegewide analysis results. This research implied that more accurate statistical information may result from analysis of evaluation ratings of groups within the community college faculty