Teacher surveys: Questions, templates, and tips

Reap the benefits of teacher surveys and exceed students’ expectations.

You don’t even need to come up with teacher survey questions since SurveyPlanet has many templates to get started with. Learn more about students, strengthen teacher-student relationships, gain parents’ trust, and experience both personal and professional growth semester after semester.

The sooner you sign up for a SurveyPlanet account, the sooner you’ll get honest, unbiased, and valuable feedback from your students. With unlimited questions, templates, and responses, SurveyPlanet makes it as easy to create, distribute, and analyze teacher surveys.

The benefits of teacher survey for students and scholars

Both students and teachers benefit greatly from surveys. Via a teacher survey for students, students get to voice their opinions about the topics that impact them, while lecturers can use the collected data to adjust their methodology and lead pupils in more meaningful ways. Teacher surveys should be used following every semester to find out what scholars found most interesting, what they did and didn’t enjoy in a class, and most importantly how educators can improve in upcoming semesters.

What are the main topics of teacher surveys?

A tremendous amount of time and resources are devoted yearly to collecting data about teachers and students. The goal of a teacher survey is to discover the main topics concerning teachers as well as determining opinions about these topics.

For surveys that are designed by administrative and data teams, the primary topics usually surround evaluation, staff-leadership relationships, professional and learning development, and overall school climate.

School climate refers to the quality of the relationships among students, teachers, and administrators. School climate is generally good when students feel safe and welcome, teachers are committed to and engaged in their work, educators share an enthusiasm for teaching and learning and have a sense of efficacy in the classroom, and school operations are mission-driven.

Conducting education surveys shows that you value your staff as leaders and learners. Know what they need to improve their well-being and grow professionally. Develop a positive school climate by visiting classrooms and planning collaboratively with everyone​.

What are the types of teacher surveys?

Not all types of surveys are equal. This is because they tackle different issues facing students and educators during the school year. Teachers' working conditions are incredibly demanding at times. The stress of grading papers, preparing lessons, and dealing with difficult parents can be almost too much to bear. That is why school management staff needs to survey teachers with

  • Teachers' job satisfaction questionnaire.
  • Teacher working conditions survey.
  • Survey questionnaire for teachers about teaching.
  • Professional development survey for teachers.
  • Parent survey for teachers
  • Questionnaire for teachers’ performance.

Nothing stops you from conducting multiple types of teacher questionnaires and cross-examining the collected data.

For example, you’ll get a much clearer picture if students' parents fill out a parent survey for teachers. These provide information about what they really think and better define their expectations. Teacher surveys for students and their parents collect their opinions, helping you set priorities and make decisions about which areas to work on.

Let’s dive deeper into the different types of teacher surveys and how you can utilize the information you collect from each.

K-12 teacher satisfaction surveys

Teachers are in a tough position. They have a direct impact on the lives of hundreds of scholars and the quality of their education. This can greatly influence how they do later in life and, because of that, it’s important to conduct teacher satisfaction surveys.

With hundreds to thousands of scholars passing through their careers, teachers can get valuable insights from the feedback of their students. However, the most important thing is to act on that feedback.

Grow and develop professionally by asking your students what they liked, and didn’t like, about you and your class. What are you doing great? What can you improve? You’ll get the answers to these questions and many more if you have them fill out a teacher satisfaction survey.

K-12 teacher satisfaction survey

Do you want to know if teachers are satisfied with their jobs? A teacher's job satisfaction questionnaire may help.

Teachers are in a tough position. They have a direct impact on the lives of hundreds of children. This can greatly influence how they do later in life and, because of that, it’s important to conduct a teacher satisfaction survey.

Some researchers suggest that the level of satisfaction of teachers is a good indicator of the happiness and academic performance of schoolchildren. A questionnaire for teachers about teaching can give you valuable insight into the level of satisfaction of teachers in your school.

With hundreds to thousands of students passing through their careers, teachers can get valuable insights from their feedback. However, the most important thing is to act on that feedback.

Grow and develop professionally by asking students what they liked, and didn’t like, about you and your class. What are you doing great? What can you improve? You’ll get the answers to these questions and many more with a teacher’s job satisfaction questionnaire.

K-12 teacher surveys for parents

Students and their parents often have different views about a teacher. Even though parents aren’t in a classroom, their opinion still matters. Having a face-to-face meeting with each parent is a time-consuming process and, even if you want to better understand their concerns, it’s impossible to do it efficiently. That’s where teacher surveys for parents can play an important role.

You can ask parents a wide range of questions and get valuable data to be used moving forward. Eventually, you can even compare results year by year and see whether you have improved as an educator in ways that matter to both students and parents. Parents will feel appreciated and gain more trust in both the school and its teachers.

Teacher surveys for students

A teacher survey for students offers more detailed, all-around questions and feedback. With a teacher's questionnaire, you get not only students’ overall satisfaction results but also their methods, effectiveness, gaps in their performance, and whether the teacher adjusts to the needs of pupils.

Data from the teacher questionnaire for students can help teachers:

  • Adjust the way they teach to better suit the needs of students.
  • Assess how effective they are.
  • Reconsider methods used while teaching.
  • Provide valuable insights about students, including what motivates them to learn and how they best retain information.
  • Help develop tools to streamline the process of transferring knowledge to students.
  • Set goals—and measure how effective they are— regarding the implementation of feedback.

At the end of the day, what’s important is strengthening the relationship between pupils and professors. When you research what they need, it’s easier to give them exactly what they need.

Seven expert tips for creating a teacher questionnaire

It’s important to mention that teacher questionnaires aren't only for schools. Every education facility can use them, whether it’s a primary, secondary, or collegiate school. Gaining feedback and insights will never go out of fashion. So, what can you do to make sure surveys collect valuable data from a large sample of students? Check out these seven expert tips for making a relevant teacher survey:

  1. Motivate students to fill out the survey and be honest.
  2. Ensure that responses are anonymous.
  3. Focus on one idea with each question.
  4. Keep questions short while still conveying the required message.
  5. Explain the value their feedback will have and how it will improve their lives.
  6. Notice trends and act accordingly to feedback.
  7. Combine essay, Likert-scale, and multiple choice questions to get a better response rate.

What are good teacher survey questions?

As most educators already know, it’s important to see theory put into action. Because of that, we’ve picked 10 teacher survey questions to show the kind of feedback that can be had straight away:

  1. Is there anything else you’d like to share about your experience at this school?
  2. On a scale of 1 to 10, how useful have your classes been?
  3. How difficult was it to receive tutoring or extra help from your professor?
  4. What type of learning method do you prefer?
  5. How well did your lecturer answer student questions?
  6. How clearly does your instructor explain the material?
  7. In your opinion, what does this professor do well?
  8. In your opinion, how could this lecturer be more effective?
  9. Is there anything else you’d like to share about your or your child’s experience with this teacher?
  10. Approximately how many hours each week did your child spend on homework for this class?

Do you want to discover more possible questions for a teacher questionnaire? Read our blog and see our well-written examples of a good survey question.

The days of distributing print surveys that are filled out with pen and paper are long gone. You can now conduct school-wide teacher surveys with only a few clicks of the keyboard—and no need to come up with questions because we’ve done it for you! All you need to do is sign up and try out our free survey maker for teachers. With our teacher survey templates, question branching, and user-friendly interface, your survey will be ready for distribution in no time.

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