I'm doing a peer evaluation of an excellent colleague's teaching. The form we have gives me some thoughts. Not always happy thoughts.
As a psych researcher I have to wonder, first: how valid are these categories for "good teaching?" I suspect nobody ever checked anything like #reliability or #validity for this, but just went with "it seems OK to me." Essentially, this is kind of a psychometric nightmare.
Second, as someone who has had a few friends and acquaintances, and who has been Very Online, and specifically on #Mastodon for a few years... what the fuck?
We're going to potentially deny tenure to people who don't have "appropriate" eye contact? Who don't "use gestures and move in the classroom effectively"? What do either of those mean? What is "appropriate" eye contact? Who has studied optimal classroom-moving strategies or gestures? (Note: Somebody might have, but I don't know what those are, and I suspect nobody in my department does).
#Autistic people, people from any #culture with different norms about eye contact, people with different background experiences regarding how to lecture, how to move, how to... gesture (?!) are potentially disadvantaged here. Okay, realistically nobody here knows what "appropriate" or "effectively" means in any valid sense, so they will go with their gut, base things on their own experiences, and give a rating.
This might be a small thing, but this is one of many examples of how less-valid #assessment opens the door to personal biases.
#highered #professor #psychometrics