Chinese Students’ Perceptions of Characteristics of Effective College Teachers: A Mixed Analysis

This study aimed to investigate Chinese students’ perceptions of effective teaching. Four hundred and thirty college students participated in this investigation. They were asked to identify 3 to 6 characteristics of effective college instructors and explain why. Themes were extracted from these qualitative data via constant comparison analysis, which then were analyzed quantitatively via descriptive and canonical discriminant analysis. The results showed that the Ethical theme was the most frequently perceived characteristic of effective college teachers. Interestingly, this theme was not reflected in the teacher evaluation forms that are currently used to evaluate teachers in China. Further, the themes identified in this study were compared with themes identified in Onwuegbuzie et al.’s (2007) study among U.S. students. The theme of Responsive received the lowest endorsement in both countries. Further, the theme of Expert had a very high endorsement rate in both countries. Also, the theme of Student-Centered received the highest endorsement from U.S. participants, in contrast to a modest endorsement from Chinese participants. Three themes, Humorous, OpenMinded, and Glamour, emerged as new themes in the Chinese sample. The implications of these findings are discussed.