Is it appropriate to include additional materials in an academic job application?

Question

I am applying to teaching jobs at small liberal arts colleges. They typically ask for the standard things: cover letter, CV, research statement and teaching statement. I feel as though a compilation of student comments and data taken from students in my classes (rating my enthusiasm and preparedness in particular) makes my application much stronger. After all, these are the types of things people look for when it comes to tenure review, so why not for a job application? My question is:

Is it inappropriate to include such additional materials in a teaching application?

Answer 1

Unless the call clearly states that nothing more must be included you should do so. As you correctly identified such information provides insights into you success in teaching. An option could be to simply include a summary in the CV or make it part of the teaching statement, as support that your teaching ideas produce good results. In short, add the material but make sure it is condensed and clearly structured. I have added such material to applications (for promotion in my case) and had someone sign off that the summary reflects the material on which it is based.

Answer 2

This would be appropriate as long as the call does not clearly discourage supplementary information (e.g. by saying that you should only include reseach and teaching statements + CV), and could strengthen your application, especially when applying to a teaching position. However, only include summary scores (such as %-students satisfied or student test results), and maybe one or two student comments. However, I would be hesitant to include comments altogether, since it is obvious that these might have been cherry-picked. A quantitative summary is much more informative. Do not include lengthy appendicies of raw evaluation data (which I've seen in applications), since this will only add clutter and make your application appear less professional.