Quality of teaching performance in higher education institutions in North Sulawesi Indonesia

The purpose of this study is to investigate the approaches and methods that are employed to evaluate teacher performance and the impact of these methods on the quality of teaching in higher educational institutions in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. The research design incorporated empirical surveys with the leaders of institutions (6), deans or heads of department (24), teachers (288) and students (192), available policy and evaluation documents and 40 interviews with the leaders, teachers and students. The study found that several methods of evaluating teaching are used by higher education institutions in North Sulawesi, Indonesia: the evaluation completed by classroom participants, the evaluation done by the leaders, and the evaluation carried out by peers. In general, this study indicated that these methods of evaluation have been carried out effectively. Therefore, the implementation of these methods has positive impacts on the teaching performance of the teachers. Further, the study found that two evaluation frameworks should be used in order to contribute to an improvement in the quality of teaching and personal development of teachers in these institutions, student evaluations and institutional evaluations. While both are important for evaluating teaching, this study showed that student evaluations are considered more important dimension in terms of improvement in the quality of teaching. Student evaluations are also important for the personal development of teachers. This research strongly suggested that institutions enhance student evaluations for the purpose of improving the quality of teaching.