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Referencing or quoting student comments in a teaching statement?

In our July "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Is it advisable to make reference to or directly quote student evaluations in a statement of teaching? I have comments from student evaluations that directly support various points I make in my teaching statement. But since the job I'm applying for doesn't ask to include teaching evaluations, I'm wondering if I should avoid doing this. For all the hiring committee knows, I'm just making it up.

I think I'd leave student comments out of a teaching statement. If the search committee decided not to ask for student evaluations, my guess is that it's probably for a reason. Maybe they don't see much value in them, given empirical research that casts doubt on their reliability and fairness? Who knows. But my sense is that a teaching statement should focus on one's pedagogy, and that candidates are probably better advised to include student evaluations scores or comments only in a full teaching dossier.

Then again, maybe I'm wrong about this. What do you all think?

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3 responses to “Referencing or quoting student comments in a teaching statement?”

  1. same here

    Marcus is right. Do not add stuff to your application packages. They are already too large to process, so more information is not better. And, as he notes, quoting from evaluations will obviously be very selective, and consequently, quite meaningless. I hope all of us have some nice ripe quotes from students about our teaching. Even the quantitative reports are fraught with difficulties, as Marcus notes.

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  2. Prof L

    If they are excellent, add them regardless of whether they are requested or not. If they are any less, then do not. I find worries re: fairness of student comments quite ironic. It’s as if everything else that goes into the application package is so fair and each and every applicant gets a fully objective and unbiased evaluation. You should do every single thing that gives you even the slightest advantage, and perfect student comments will more often than give you that.

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  3. E

    I included a few evaluation quotes in my statement as evidence for claims about the effectiveness of my instructional methods. For example, my statement made a claim that some teaching method I was using contributed to inclusion, and I provided a comment that said something like “such and such class activity was a great way to include everyone, even the students who were normally quiet”. I only included comments that said specific things connecting an instructional method with its effectiveness–none of the general (but glowing) “best prof ever!” type comments.
    On the issue of selective quoting: I chose comments that did a particularly nice and succinct job of expressing the idea I was trying to get at in my statement. But they were otherwise typical comments for my evals. In a footnote I said that I would make my full evaluations available upon request. So if anyone had asked to see my full evaluations (they didn’t) I don’t believe it would look like the quotes were misleading or cherry picked, etc.
    I don’t know if it helped any, but I was invited to a decent number of interviews (and got a job) so I’d say it didn’t hurt me.

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