What Are They Thinking? Students' Expectations and Self-Assessments

Abstract Student teacher evaluations have been the subject of a great deal of research. In this study, the authors surveyed 750 freshmen in an Introduction to Business class. The authors found that students' actual perceptions often diverged from what they were assessing on teaching evaluations and that their expectations of the teacher and the class, as well as their self-assessments, were very related to how students rate classes and teachers. The authors suggest that caution should be exercised in the use of student evaluations.