ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses quantitative evaluation of student perceptions and judgement has been managed across the totality of a BA teacher education course. A number of issues needed to be addressed prior to launching into the pilot: whether there should be some place for qualitative expression of student perception and if so, what the balance in the questionnaire should be between quantitative and qualitative data. The Higher Education Funding Council for England, the Higher Education Quality Council and the Department for Education are sources of explicit external pressure on colleges and universities to be more rigorous and more public in their evaluation systems. The cycle as a whole generates a vast amount of documentation which is then available for quality audit. The pilot exercise reported involved collaboration between the Academic Standards Unit and Course Leaders in Teacher Education in the construction or adaptation of questionnaires, handling of the quantitative data and the preparation of a report.