I stumbled across a provocative tidbit while reading sections fromWhy Don’t Students Like School? by cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham.
“College professors typically get written student evaluations of their teaching at the end of every course… Researchers have examined these sorts of survey to figure out which professors get good ratings and why. One of the interesting findings is that most of the items are redundant. A two-item survey would be almost as useful as a thirty-item survey, because all of the questions really boil down to two: Does the professor seem like a nice person, and is the class well organized? Although they don’t realize they are doing so, students treat each of the thirty items as variants of one of these two questions.” (50)
Willingham, D. (2009). Why don’t students like school? : A cognitive scientist answers questions about how the mind works and what it means for the classroom (1st ed.). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
When I’m done with my current mission (investigating the power of stories in education), I’d like to find the studies upon which this claim must be based.