Search

In this study it was found that teaching seems to be most effective when it allows a close, friendly relationship with students over a substantial period of time. The most significant faculty-student relationships were seldom described by faculty as impersonal, and almost all such relationships were associated with continuing faculty-student interaction. Teachers who were more accessible and more interactive with students were not merely being friendly or gregarious; they had considerable intellectual impact on students. Most students described the faculty members who contributed most to them as having stimulated them intellectually, demanded high quality work of them, made them feel confident about their abilities, and interested them in the teacher's field. These interactive factors were also characteristic of faculty denoted as intellectually influential by students who became more intellectually oriented over the 4 years. (Author)

As part of a study of faculty characteristics and their influence on students, questionnaires covering a wide variety of faculty attitudes, values, and behaviors were sent to over 1500 professors at six diverse colleges and universities. For this report, data were drawn from those collected on faculty attitudes toward student participation in campus governance. While the 1069 responding faculty were generally favorable toward student participation in the formulation of social rules and regulations, they were reluctant to share their academic power with students. Ninety-five professors thought that students should have an equal vote with the faculty on academic matters (equal vote group) and 41 others felt that students should have no role in the formulation of academic policy (no vote group). The remaining faculty fell between these two extremes. Both "extreme" groups were composed of committed and responsible teachers, but their responses to student participation in governance were found to be related to their educational philosophies, conceptions of and extra-academic contact with students, fields of study, political orientation, and involvement in campus affairs. The equal vote group had a liberal view of society and life and a positive view of students, and the no vote group was basically conservative and tended to believe that external control, motivation, and direction were needed in order for students to profit maximally from their education. (WM)

This paper reports on a survey sent to 1,559 faculty members at 6 widely diverse colleges and universities in 3 states in the fall of 1968. Seventy percent of the questionnaires were returned. The purpose of the questionnaire was to determine faculty attitudes toward educational change and to learn more about the characteristics of those who favored change as contrasted to those who did not. The results indicated that the majority of faculty members favored change, but there were sharp differences between those who did and those who did not. The faculty who favored change were more likely to see the purpose of college education as self-development in students, emphasized personalization in the educative process, held permissive views about student personal life, believed in a theory of teaching and learning emphasizing the self-motivating power of students, and favored giving students significant roles in academic and social policymaking. They tended to be from the junior ranks, politically liberal, non-religious, and taught in the humanities or the social sciences. Those opposed to academic change wanted students to acquire vocational and technical competence, deemphasized the need for close faculty-student relationship, emphasized external motivation, and opposed student participation in governance. Most were from the senior ranks, more conservative, and religious. (AF)

The major purpose of this study was to characterize effective teaching performance and provide a basis for the evaluation of teaching. Four surveys were conducted in which: (1) students described their best and worst teachers; (2) faculty described the teaching of colleagues they regarded as the best and worst instructors; (3) faculty described the ways they distributed their time among various academic pursuits; and (4) students independently described the teaching of instructors previously rated by other students and faculty. Results indicated: (1) agreement among students, and between faculty and students about the effectiveness of given teachers; (2) best and worst teachers engage in same professional activities, and allocate their time among academic pursuits the same way; (3) student rating of best teachers showed only negligible correlation with academic rank; and (4) a disproportionate number of best teachers taught seminars rather than lecture courses. Eighty-five items, which can be divided in 5 components of effective teaching, characterized best teachers as perceived by students; 54 items, also producing 5 scales, characterized best teachers as perceived by faculty. Nine types of effective teaching were identified using these scales. (AF)