CRITICAL DIMENSIONS IN EVALUATING TEACHER CLARITY

Analysis of studies on teacher clarity reveals five low-inference components of clarity: understanding, structuring, sequencing, explaining, and presenting. In addition to selecting appropriate lowinference indicators, our studies indicate three other critical dimensions regarding the observation and evaluation of teacher clarity. 1. Qualifications of raters should include content specialization and teaching experience, both of which are relevant to the teaching situation observed. 2. Teacher dynamism should be separated from teacher clarity. 3. In order to relate teacher clarity to student achievement, a measure of student opportunity to learn should accompany the measure of teacher clarity.