Formal research on evaluating teaching spans a period of over 60 years (Aleamoni, 1987b). The last 20 years have seen an increase in such research with an emphasis on improving instruction through faculty development programs. Unfortunately, the formal, controlled research in the instructional improvement area is sparse compared to that in the instructional evaluation area. Clearly the literature points out that teaching can be evaluated (McKeachie, 1979;Millman, 1981) and provides many examples of ways of going about it. Although there is not as clearly defined a supporting theory underlying faculty development, there is an abundance of descriptive data on how individual colleges and universities have engaged in effective and varied faculty development programs (Aleamoni, 1987c).
Faculty development is closely related to faculty evaluation. The parallel development of the two may rest on no more comi~lex an explanation than the fact that an increased emphasis on evaluating faculty naturally has provoked the question, "What is to be done with or follow from what the evaluations have revealed?" While the administrators have insisted that the faculty should be more strenuously evaluated, the faculty have insisted that they should be given correspondingly greater support.
Why is there so little research on the effectiveness of faculty development programs? In order to answer this question, one must look at the past and present make-up of such programs. The following five points are an attempt to summarize the characteristics and concerns of such programs.
- The programs vary widely in their content and orientation from those that provide specific models of instruction for faculty to emulate to simply providing sources of information for the faculty member to choose and use as he/she sees This article is based on a paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, New Orleans, April 1988.