Students' Perceptions of Clinical Teaching

Abstract

Evaluation of faculty, especially by students, has become an important issue given the emphasis today on student consumer rights and tight university budgets. As Thomas Brothen (1979) pointed out at a recent conference on Improving University Teaching, "Educational institutions must attract and hold students and be prepared to demonstrate they are serving students' needs" (p. 408). Because educators want to know that they are meeting students' needs, numerous standardized rating forms that allow students to evaluate their instructors have been developed. These are widely used to document teaching effectiveness for academic advancement, administrative decisions, and self-improvement (Aleamoni, 1973; Irby & Rakestraw, 1981; Seldin, 1980). These classroom rating scales are generally considered valid and reliable indicators of teaching effectiveness (Thorne, 1980). Evaluation of the nursing teacher is especially complicated. Classroom rating scales are not sufficient because of the additional component of clinical instruction. As Jacobsen (1966) points out, "In the clinical situation the relationship of student to teacher is a significant one. The learning situation is often one that cannot be repeated, and the clinical learning milieu is not usually controlled specifically for the teaching of the nursing student only" (p. 218).