Assessment of Charisma as a Factor in Effective Teaching

In order to advance the effectiveness of higher education, we concentrated attention on teachers' classroom behaviours and aimed to develop an inventory for evaluating teacher's charisma in college settings. This study identified teacher characteristics that are indicators of teaching charisma and then developed a teaching evaluation questionnaire based on these indicators. The exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis resulted in a 23-item Inventory of Teaching Charisma in College Classroom (ITCCC) that comprises four factors: knowledge, character traits, teaching techniques, and humor. As opposed to the questionnaire widely used in higher education institutions in Taiwan that mainly focuses on the evaluation of teacher's teaching method or attitude, the new measure enables college students to evaluate teacher's teaching in terms of their charisma. An advantage of thus instrument is that it has just a few items and is therefore easy to administer and to complete. It results in good response rates from students and the analysis is straightforward, since the scores on the items are simply summed to get the subscale scores. The results can serve as a basis for teachers to improve these skills or qualities and may provide a framework to help teachers to increase their teaching efficiency.