The Tehran University of Medical Sciences Faculty Member's Viewpoints about the Teacher's Evaluation System: A Qualitative Study

According to the different advantages and disadvantages of students` questionnaires as a source of teachers’ evaluation، this qualitative study aimed to find out the faculty members’ viewpoints about the present teachers’ evaluation process in Tehran University of Medical Sciences. The present study is a qualitative study based on content analysis which was conducted on 20 faculty members of Tehran University of Medical Sciences chosen purposefully and reached the saturation level. The data were gathered and analyzed in 2013. Data were collected through a topic guide containing 3 main questions with semi structured interviews and were analyzed through applying a five-step content analysis using Atlas ti. Findings showed that there were 4 themes and 17 subthemes which are as follows: clarifying the purpose of teacher evaluation (Correction or punishment)، correcting the evaluative methods (development of mixed evaluation method، evaluation sheet correction، and designing of evaluation tools)، determining the strengths and weaknesses of each method (students’ questionnaire، managers’ questionnaire، peer review، self-evaluation، and portfolio). It is necessary to clarify the aim of evaluation and emphasize its positive aspects applying a mixed method of students’ questionnaire، managers’ questionnaire، peer review، self evaluation، portfolio، observation of colleagues while teaching، measurement of students’ achievements to achieve a comprehensive evaluating of faculty members.