Characteristics of Graduate Student Instructors as Related to Students' Judgments of Their Competence

The present study seeks primarily to determine if there is a congruence between the perceived similarity of a student to his instructor and the student's judgment of the instructor's competence. To test this hypothesis, an Interpersonal Checklist, consisting of 160 adjectives, was devised and administered to two sets of 50 students during a period of six months. Three instructional sets were utilized with a five-point Likert response system in conjunction with the checklist. One instructional set asked the student to describe his instructor, another asked for a judgment of the extent to which the student thought himself similar to his instructor, and another set asked for a judgment of the extent to which the student thought himself similar to his own father. Also administered was the Student Reaction to Instruction Form LRC-4--a reputable measure of a teacher's effectiveness as judged by students. The results were as follows:

1. The question of whether a relationship exists between the perceived similarity of a student to his instructor and the student's judgment of the instructor's competence was left unresolved. Possible reasons for this phenomenon were discussed.

2. Ten item variables of the Interpersonal Checklist that correlated most highly with the SRI scores for Study One were written in a ten-step multiple regression equation. The Likert values for the ten selected item variables of the Interpersonal Checklist for Study Two were fed into the equation to test its efficiency in predicting SRI scores of Study Two. This regression equation was largely ineffective for predicting, in individual cases, criterion scores of teaching effectiveness. A validity coefficient of .57 was produced.

3. A list of adjectives whose Likert values correlated .30 or more with the SRI scores for both Study One and Study Two were presented in a list as exemplifying those terms which best describe teachers described as effective by their students. These terms are very similar to those delineated by earlier studies of teacher effectiveness.