Understanding Student Evaluations: What All Faculty Should Know

ith the new millennium, many people are reflecting on the past while preparing for the future. Within higher education, that reflection reveals a struggle between its very early history, which emphasized teaching (sitting at the feet of Aristotle), and its infatuation with research, which developed in the late 1800s (profoundly influenced by German institutions). Al though universities have consistently val ued both teaching and research, "there has been a subtle but pervasive transformation of faculty priorities in American higher education" (Glassick, Huber, and Maeroff 1997, 7). Specifically, scholarship has been defined as research and publication and has overshadowed teaching in tenure and promotion decisions. More recently, however, the definition and scope of schol arship are being questioned.

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