This research explores if student and faculty ethnic similarity produces more favorable teaching evaluations, and if the effect is enhanced when ethnic group representation on campus is low. When student and faculty ethnicity was similar, (a) students from low-representation groups provided the highest evaluations, and (b) students from high-representation groups showed both “more favorable” and “less favorable” evaluations. Evidence suggests that the pattern of findings was strong for qualitatively oriented courses, with the results for quantitative classes less conclusive. Discussion focuses on potential influences to ethnic similarity effects, applications to real-world settings, and future research.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.