John A Centra
Biographic Data
| ID | 4136846 |
|---|---|
| NAME | John A Centra |
| GIVEN NAMES | John A |
| FAMILY NAME | Centra |
| SIGNATURE | CENTRA J A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Educational Testing Service |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 131 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 26 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1969 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2002 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Advice for New Faculty Members: Nihil Nimus
(2002). Advice for New Faculty Members: Nihil Nimus. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 73, The Faculty in the New Millenium, pp. 186-188
Is There Gender Bias in Student Evaluations of Teaching
Additional informationNotes on contributorsJohn A. CentraJohn A. Centra is research professor and professor emeritus, and Noreen B. Gaubatz is a doctoral student in higher education at Syracuse University.Noreen B. GaubatzJohn A. Centra is research professor and professor emeritus, and Noreen B. Gaubatz is a doctoral student in higher education at Syracuse University
Reflective Faculty Evaluation: Enhancing Teaching and Determining Faculty Effectiveness
Centra underscores the importance of active methods of teaching and the need to evaluate those methods in less traditional ways. He discusses the value and proper use of self-reports and portfolios, and examines better ways to involve colleagues in evaluating and improving teaching
The Use of the Teaching Portfolio and Student Evaluations for Summative Evaluation
Additional informationNotes on contributorsJohn A. CentraJohn A. Centra is professor and chair in the Department of Higher Education at Syracuse University
By Design: Planning Research on Higher Education
1. Why Do Research On Higher Education? Many Questions, Many Options Our Philosophy of Research Design How This Book is Organized 2. What Are Your Questions? Why Are Research Questions So Important? Getting Specific Building on the Work of Others Correlation versus Causation The Wheel of Science 3. What Groups Do You Want to Study? Specifying the Target Population Where Should you Conduct the Study Selecting Your Sample More Than One Type of Resp…
Improving Undergraduate Education through Faculty Development: An Analysis of Effective Programs and Practices
(1986). Improving Undergraduate Education through Faculty Development: An Analysis of Effective Programs and Practices. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 57, No. 6, pp. 684-685
Changing Practices in Faculty Evaluation
Changing Practices in Faculty Evaluation." The Journal of Higher Education, 56(4), pp. 483–484
College Enrollment in the 1980s: Projections and Possibilities
Growth and size have long been hallmarks of progress in America, and by these standards, higher education has been a resounding success. Enrollments at colleges and universities have climbed to record levels in the past twenty-five years. In the 1960s alone, undergraduate enrollment doubled to 4 million and total enrollment rose to 8.6 million [5]. A number of conditions have combined to produce this growth. Foremost is a population boom that dou…
College Enrollment in the 1980s
Graduate Degree Aspirations of Ethnic Student Groups
The degree objectives of prospective graduate students from eight ethnic groups were investigated using the extensive (200,000 plus) Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) registrant population of 1976–1977. GRE scores, undergraduate grade point average (GPA), and being a male were the important predictors of students' expectations of obtaining a doctor's rather than a master's degree, and this was generally true for each of the ethnic groups. Charac…
Types of Faculty Development Programs
(1978). Types of Faculty Development Programs. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 49, No. 2, pp. 151-162
The Effects of Academic Departments on Student Learning
The question of educational effects in higher education is reexamined by studying the effects of academic departments (rather than entire colleges) and employing as criterion measures achievement tests appropriate for the individual departments. Analyses of two different sets of data revealed considerable between-departments variation in educational effectiveness within the same institution, thus suggesting that educational effects research is mo…
Student Ratings of Instruction and Their Relationship to Student Learning
Student ratings of instruction were correlated with examination performance in 72 sections of seven courses. In two of the courses, students had been randomly assigned to sections. The pattern of correlations across the courses indicated that the global ratings of teacher effectiveness and of the value of the course to students were most highly related to mean exam performance (12 out of 24 product-moment and partial correlations were 58 or above…
Student Points of View in Ratings of College Instruction
This study investigated student points of view in their ratings of specific courses and instructors by analyzing student responses within each of three classes separately, and then sought to generalize the results further by additional analyses with 300 students randomly selected from 402 classes in five colleges. Different points of view were found for student ratings of course examinations, textbooks and supplementary readings, and class discus…
Between, Within, and Total Group Factor Analyses of Student Ratings of Instruction
The purpose of this study was to compare the factor structures of student ratings of instruction resulting from total group, between group, and within group analyses. Six factors obtained from responses by 9700 students to 31 items were used to approximate the between group covariance matrix based on 43'7 classroom means and the pooled within classroom covariance matrix. A good approximation to both the between and within group covariance matrice…
Colleagues as Raters of Classroom Instruction
Colleagues can make a unique and important contribution to the evaluation of faculty performance. The evidence from this study, however, indicates that colleague ratings of teaching effectiveness based primarily on classroom observation would in most instances not be reliable enough to use in making decisions on tenure and promotion-at least not without faculty members investing much more time in visitations or training sessions. Nevertheless, th…
The Relationship Between Student and Alumni Ratings of Teachers
Student and alumni ratings for 23 teachers were found to correlate .75 (somewhat less for teachers rated only by graduates of their department). This substantial agreement between current students and alumni (of five years) regarding who have been effective or ineffective teachers suggests a good deal of persistence in judgments of teachers by students
Faculty Views of the Academic Environment: Situational vs. Institutional Perspectives
In an attempt to determine the relative importance of institutional vs. situational perspectives in influencing faculty perceptions of the academic environment, Institutional Functioning Inventory responses were obtained from representative samples of faculty, students and administrators at a diverse cross-section of American colleges. Though administrators tended to have more favorable views than those of the students or faculty members, the evi…
The Student as Godfather? The Impact of Student Ratings on Academia
T are some who fear that the college student, by virtue of the apparent increasing emphasis on student ratings of professors, could become the Godfather of the academic community. More exactly, they fear that too much emphasis could be put on these ratings and that, generally speaking, the power that students might acquire would not be in the best interest of the academic community. One can, in fact, point to the medieval universities as an examp…
Validation by the Multigroup-Multiscale Matrix: An Adaptation of Campbell and Fiske's Convergent and Discriminant Validational Procedure
Campbell and Fiske advocate an approach to investigating validity that employs a matrix of intercorrelations among tests representing more than one trait, each measured by more than one method. This paper presents an application of the Campbell-Fiske multitrait-multimethod procedure. Referred to as validation by the multigroup-multiscale matrix, this adaptation compares discrete groups of individuals and the scale scores that represent their resp…
College Environments and Student Academic Achievement
In this study, selected aspects of the college environment were related to student academic achievement at 27 small liberal arts colleges. Academic achievement was measured by senior students' scores on the Area Tests of the Graduate Record Examination; the Scholastic Aptitude Test (Verbal and Mathematics) scores of these same students prior to college entrance were used as a control measure for differences in initial aptitude. The colleges' soci…
Faculty Views of Institutional Functioning: A New Measure of College Environments
Academic Growth in Predominantly Negro and Predominantly White Colleges
Attention has recently been focused on the predominantly Negro colleges and the role they have played or should play in higher education. As late as 1965, McGrath reported that the predominantly Negro institutions accounted for less than 3% of the country's college students, but provided a higher education for more than half of the Negro college (McGrath, 1965). Taken as a group, predominantly Negro colleges do not compare favorably to predominan…
Relationships between College Characteristics and Student Achievement
As greater numbers of young people continue on to college, it becomes of increasing concern to know which institutional characteristics are associated with how much a student learns during his four years in college. Such information is important not only to the theorist who is attempting to understand how and to what extent college characteristics influence student behavior, but to the college administrator who requires such information for decis…
Black Students at Predominantly White Colleges: A Research Description
Is There Gender Bias in Student Evaluations of Teaching
Additional informationNotes on contributorsJohn A. CentraJohn A. Centra is research professor and professor emeritus, and Noreen B. Gaubatz is a doctoral student in higher education at Syracuse University.Noreen B. GaubatzJohn A. Centra is research professor and professor emeritus, and Noreen B. Gaubatz is a doctoral student in higher education at Syracuse University
Reflective Faculty Evaluation: Enhancing Teaching and Determining Faculty Effectiveness
Centra underscores the importance of active methods of teaching and the need to evaluate those methods in less traditional ways. He discusses the value and proper use of self-reports and portfolios, and examines better ways to involve colleagues in evaluating and improving teaching
By Design: Planning Research on Higher Education
1. Why Do Research On Higher Education? Many Questions, Many Options Our Philosophy of Research Design How This Book is Organized 2. What Are Your Questions? Why Are Research Questions So Important? Getting Specific Building on the Work of Others Correlation versus Causation The Wheel of Science 3. What Groups Do You Want to Study? Specifying the Target Population Where Should you Conduct the Study Selecting Your Sample More Than One Type of Resp…
Relationships between College Characteristics and Student Achievement
As greater numbers of young people continue on to college, it becomes of increasing concern to know which institutional characteristics are associated with how much a student learns during his four years in college. Such information is important not only to the theorist who is attempting to understand how and to what extent college characteristics influence student behavior, but to the college administrator who requires such information for decis…
The Effects of Academic Departments on Student Learning
The question of educational effects in higher education is reexamined by studying the effects of academic departments (rather than entire colleges) and employing as criterion measures achievement tests appropriate for the individual departments. Analyses of two different sets of data revealed considerable between-departments variation in educational effectiveness within the same institution, thus suggesting that educational effects research is mo…
College Environments and Student Academic Achievement
In this study, selected aspects of the college environment were related to student academic achievement at 27 small liberal arts colleges. Academic achievement was measured by senior students' scores on the Area Tests of the Graduate Record Examination; the Scholastic Aptitude Test (Verbal and Mathematics) scores of these same students prior to college entrance were used as a control measure for differences in initial aptitude. The colleges' soci…
Student Ratings of Instruction and Their Relationship to Student Learning
Student ratings of instruction were correlated with examination performance in 72 sections of seven courses. In two of the courses, students had been randomly assigned to sections. The pattern of correlations across the courses indicated that the global ratings of teacher effectiveness and of the value of the course to students were most highly related to mean exam performance (12 out of 24 product-moment and partial correlations were 58 or above…
Changing Practices in Faculty Evaluation
Changing Practices in Faculty Evaluation." The Journal of Higher Education, 56(4), pp. 483–484
The Use of the Teaching Portfolio and Student Evaluations for Summative Evaluation
Additional informationNotes on contributorsJohn A. CentraJohn A. Centra is professor and chair in the Department of Higher Education at Syracuse University
Types of Faculty Development Programs
(1978). Types of Faculty Development Programs. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 49, No. 2, pp. 151-162
Faculty Views of the Academic Environment: Situational vs. Institutional Perspectives
In an attempt to determine the relative importance of institutional vs. situational perspectives in influencing faculty perceptions of the academic environment, Institutional Functioning Inventory responses were obtained from representative samples of faculty, students and administrators at a diverse cross-section of American colleges. Though administrators tended to have more favorable views than those of the students or faculty members, the evi…
Colleagues as Raters of Classroom Instruction
Colleagues can make a unique and important contribution to the evaluation of faculty performance. The evidence from this study, however, indicates that colleague ratings of teaching effectiveness based primarily on classroom observation would in most instances not be reliable enough to use in making decisions on tenure and promotion-at least not without faculty members investing much more time in visitations or training sessions. Nevertheless, th…
Academic Growth in Predominantly Negro and Predominantly White Colleges
Attention has recently been focused on the predominantly Negro colleges and the role they have played or should play in higher education. As late as 1965, McGrath reported that the predominantly Negro institutions accounted for less than 3% of the country's college students, but provided a higher education for more than half of the Negro college (McGrath, 1965). Taken as a group, predominantly Negro colleges do not compare favorably to predominan…
Black Students at Predominantly White Colleges: A Research Description
College Enrollment in the 1980s: Projections and Possibilities
Growth and size have long been hallmarks of progress in America, and by these standards, higher education has been a resounding success. Enrollments at colleges and universities have climbed to record levels in the past twenty-five years. In the 1960s alone, undergraduate enrollment doubled to 4 million and total enrollment rose to 8.6 million [5]. A number of conditions have combined to produce this growth. Foremost is a population boom that dou…
Improving Undergraduate Education through Faculty Development: An Analysis of Effective Programs and Practices
(1986). Improving Undergraduate Education through Faculty Development: An Analysis of Effective Programs and Practices. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 57, No. 6, pp. 684-685
College Enrollment in the 1980s
The Student as Godfather? The Impact of Student Ratings on Academia
T are some who fear that the college student, by virtue of the apparent increasing emphasis on student ratings of professors, could become the Godfather of the academic community. More exactly, they fear that too much emphasis could be put on these ratings and that, generally speaking, the power that students might acquire would not be in the best interest of the academic community. One can, in fact, point to the medieval universities as an examp…
Attitudes and Secondary School Backgrounds of Catholics Entering College
Faculty Views of Institutional Functioning: A New Measure of College Environments
Academic Growth in Predominantly Negro and Predominantly White Colleges
Attention has recently been focused on the predominantly Negro colleges and the role they have played or should play in higher education. As late as 1965, McGrath reported that the predominantly Negro institutions accounted for less than 3% of the country's college students, but provided a higher education for more than half of the Negro college (McGrath, 1965). Taken as a group, predominantly Negro colleges do not compare favorably to predominan…
Relationships between College Characteristics and Student Achievement
As greater numbers of young people continue on to college, it becomes of increasing concern to know which institutional characteristics are associated with how much a student learns during his four years in college. Such information is important not only to the theorist who is attempting to understand how and to what extent college characteristics influence student behavior, but to the college administrator who requires such information for decis…
Black Students at Predominantly White Colleges: A Research Description
Validation by the Multigroup-Multiscale Matrix: An Adaptation of Campbell and Fiske's Convergent and Discriminant Validational Procedure
Campbell and Fiske advocate an approach to investigating validity that employs a matrix of intercorrelations among tests representing more than one trait, each measured by more than one method. This paper presents an application of the Campbell-Fiske multitrait-multimethod procedure. Referred to as validation by the multigroup-multiscale matrix, this adaptation compares discrete groups of individuals and the scale scores that represent their resp…
College Environments and Student Academic Achievement
In this study, selected aspects of the college environment were related to student academic achievement at 27 small liberal arts colleges. Academic achievement was measured by senior students' scores on the Area Tests of the Graduate Record Examination; the Scholastic Aptitude Test (Verbal and Mathematics) scores of these same students prior to college entrance were used as a control measure for differences in initial aptitude. The colleges' soci…
The Student as Godfather? The Impact of Student Ratings on Academia
T are some who fear that the college student, by virtue of the apparent increasing emphasis on student ratings of professors, could become the Godfather of the academic community. More exactly, they fear that too much emphasis could be put on these ratings and that, generally speaking, the power that students might acquire would not be in the best interest of the academic community. One can, in fact, point to the medieval universities as an examp…
The Relationship Between Student and Alumni Ratings of Teachers
Student and alumni ratings for 23 teachers were found to correlate .75 (somewhat less for teachers rated only by graduates of their department). This substantial agreement between current students and alumni (of five years) regarding who have been effective or ineffective teachers suggests a good deal of persistence in judgments of teachers by students
Faculty Views of the Academic Environment: Situational vs. Institutional Perspectives
In an attempt to determine the relative importance of institutional vs. situational perspectives in influencing faculty perceptions of the academic environment, Institutional Functioning Inventory responses were obtained from representative samples of faculty, students and administrators at a diverse cross-section of American colleges. Though administrators tended to have more favorable views than those of the students or faculty members, the evi…
Between, Within, and Total Group Factor Analyses of Student Ratings of Instruction
The purpose of this study was to compare the factor structures of student ratings of instruction resulting from total group, between group, and within group analyses. Six factors obtained from responses by 9700 students to 31 items were used to approximate the between group covariance matrix based on 43'7 classroom means and the pooled within classroom covariance matrix. A good approximation to both the between and within group covariance matrice…
Colleagues as Raters of Classroom Instruction
Colleagues can make a unique and important contribution to the evaluation of faculty performance. The evidence from this study, however, indicates that colleague ratings of teaching effectiveness based primarily on classroom observation would in most instances not be reliable enough to use in making decisions on tenure and promotion-at least not without faculty members investing much more time in visitations or training sessions. Nevertheless, th…
Student Points of View in Ratings of College Instruction
This study investigated student points of view in their ratings of specific courses and instructors by analyzing student responses within each of three classes separately, and then sought to generalize the results further by additional analyses with 300 students randomly selected from 402 classes in five colleges. Different points of view were found for student ratings of course examinations, textbooks and supplementary readings, and class discus…
The Effects of Academic Departments on Student Learning
The question of educational effects in higher education is reexamined by studying the effects of academic departments (rather than entire colleges) and employing as criterion measures achievement tests appropriate for the individual departments. Analyses of two different sets of data revealed considerable between-departments variation in educational effectiveness within the same institution, thus suggesting that educational effects research is mo…
Student Ratings of Instruction and Their Relationship to Student Learning
Student ratings of instruction were correlated with examination performance in 72 sections of seven courses. In two of the courses, students had been randomly assigned to sections. The pattern of correlations across the courses indicated that the global ratings of teacher effectiveness and of the value of the course to students were most highly related to mean exam performance (12 out of 24 product-moment and partial correlations were 58 or above…
Types of Faculty Development Programs
(1978). Types of Faculty Development Programs. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 49, No. 2, pp. 151-162
College Enrollment in the 1980s: Projections and Possibilities
Growth and size have long been hallmarks of progress in America, and by these standards, higher education has been a resounding success. Enrollments at colleges and universities have climbed to record levels in the past twenty-five years. In the 1960s alone, undergraduate enrollment doubled to 4 million and total enrollment rose to 8.6 million [5]. A number of conditions have combined to produce this growth. Foremost is a population boom that dou…
College Enrollment in the 1980s
Graduate Degree Aspirations of Ethnic Student Groups
The degree objectives of prospective graduate students from eight ethnic groups were investigated using the extensive (200,000 plus) Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) registrant population of 1976–1977. GRE scores, undergraduate grade point average (GPA), and being a male were the important predictors of students' expectations of obtaining a doctor's rather than a master's degree, and this was generally true for each of the ethnic groups. Charac…
Changing Practices in Faculty Evaluation
Changing Practices in Faculty Evaluation." The Journal of Higher Education, 56(4), pp. 483–484
Improving Undergraduate Education through Faculty Development: An Analysis of Effective Programs and Practices
(1986). Improving Undergraduate Education through Faculty Development: An Analysis of Effective Programs and Practices. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 57, No. 6, pp. 684-685
By Design: Planning Research on Higher Education
1. Why Do Research On Higher Education? Many Questions, Many Options Our Philosophy of Research Design How This Book is Organized 2. What Are Your Questions? Why Are Research Questions So Important? Getting Specific Building on the Work of Others Correlation versus Causation The Wheel of Science 3. What Groups Do You Want to Study? Specifying the Target Population Where Should you Conduct the Study Selecting Your Sample More Than One Type of Resp…
The Use of the Teaching Portfolio and Student Evaluations for Summative Evaluation
Additional informationNotes on contributorsJohn A. CentraJohn A. Centra is professor and chair in the Department of Higher Education at Syracuse University
Reflective Faculty Evaluation: Enhancing Teaching and Determining Faculty Effectiveness
Centra underscores the importance of active methods of teaching and the need to evaluate those methods in less traditional ways. He discusses the value and proper use of self-reports and portfolios, and examines better ways to involve colleagues in evaluating and improving teaching
Is There Gender Bias in Student Evaluations of Teaching
Additional informationNotes on contributorsJohn A. CentraJohn A. Centra is research professor and professor emeritus, and Noreen B. Gaubatz is a doctoral student in higher education at Syracuse University.Noreen B. GaubatzJohn A. Centra is research professor and professor emeritus, and Noreen B. Gaubatz is a doctoral student in higher education at Syracuse University
Psychology (26 works) · Mathematics education (23 works) · Higher education (17 works) · Political science (15 works) · Pedagogy (13 works) · Sociology (13 works) · Higher Education Research Studies (12 works) · Medical education (12 works) · Medicine (12 works) · Evaluation of Teaching Practices (11 works)