Teacher greetings increase college students' test scores.

The current study is an extension of a previous investigation dealing with teacher greetings to students. The present investigation used teacher greetings with college students and academic performance (test scores). We report data using university students and in-class test performance. Students in introductory psychology who received teachers' personal recognition before class begins ("Hello", "I am glad you're in class today") did significantly better on a class test that day than the same students who did not receive such preclass attention. Pretest mean was 67.05% and posttest mean was 85.25%. There were 40 participants, (t(39) = 7.401, p<.001). This is a potentially important easy way to positively impact student learning.

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Student evaluations are widely used in colleges in the USA (d'Apollonia & Abrami, 1997; Greenwald & Gillmore, 1997). One assumption underlying the use of student evaluations is that if evaluations improve teaching, students will get a better education, learn more which should be reflected in their test scores. In 1951 Carl Rogers (as cited in Nietzel, Bernstein, Kramer, & Milch, 2003) believed that the relationship between a therapist and a client was the single most important element in effective psychotherapy. Sidney Jourard pointed out that what applies to a therapist and client could also...