Teacher Education; Teaching Methods IDENTIFIERS Active Teaching Behaviors; Student Opinions About Instructional Procedures

A study investigated the effects of actively involving students in a social studies methods class on instructor evaluations given by students. Subjects were 30 undergraduates who were all elementary education majors except for one special education major. Subjects (27 female and 3 male) ranged in age from 21 to 53 years old. The experimental method involved students of two social studies methods classes (one taught by a passive instructional approach, the other by an active instructional approach) filling out course and instructor evaluation summaries that were distributed by the College of Education and Psychology. Findings were that students from the methods class taught by an active instructional approach gave the instructor statistically significant higher mean rankings on the questions of instructor's ability to promote understanding of principles underlying the subject matter and instructor's performance compared to other instructors' performance than the mean rankings given by students to the instructor of th