Hours of contact and their relationship to students' evaluations of teaching effectiveness

This study was designed to determine if hours of contact with a teacher influenced a student's perceptions of teaching effectiveness. Three hundred forty-one nursing students used a researcher developed instrument to rate five teachers of nursing on classroom teaching effectiveness, and one of the five teachers on clinical teaching effectiveness. Results indicated that a positive relationship existed between students' ratings of their clinical teacher's teaching effectiveness in the classroom and clinical area. The significant Pearson correlations for the five teachers ranged from .61 to .91 (p = .000). The hypothesis, that increased contact hours with a teacher would have a positive influence on students' evaluations of a teacher, received support. Three of five clinical groups of students gave their clinical instructors significantly higher scores for classroom teaching effectiveness than did other students.