Student evaluations of college instructors: Effects of type of course taught, instructor gender and gender role, and student gender.

Abstract

The college curriculum is often separated into divisions or course types (e.g., natural science, the arts) that may be perceived to differ in the extent to which they use expressive feminine attributes (e.g., affectionate, sensitive) and instrumental masculine attributes (e.g., assertive, forceful). In Experiment 1, the effects of course type, student gender, and instructor gender and gender role on student evaluations of instructor effectiveness were examined. In Experiment 2, students' perceptions of the importance of various gender role characteristics in instructors of different course types were explored. Results suggest that instructor gender role is more important than instructor gender in affecting student evaluations. Both female and male students preferred instructors (science instructors, in particular) who possessed both feminine and masculine characteristics, regardless of the gender of the instructor.

Profiling Instructional Effectiveness to Reveal Its Relationship to Learning

“…Distribution of the courses with respect to grade levels was as follows: freshman (34.1 %), sophomore (24.5 %), junior (20.1 %), and senior (21.3 %). Gender information of student raters was not available; which is consistent with many findings in the literature that did not identify the gender of students as an influencing factor on student ratings (Fernandez and Mateo 1997;Freeman 1994;Ludwig and Meacham 1997). Student grades had a distribution with a mean of 2.39 (out of 4.00) and a standard deviation of 0.59.…”

Gender in STEM Education: an Exploratory Study of Student Perceptions of Math and Science Instructors in the United Arab Emirates

“…These expectations may be based on students' prior experiences with female and male professors or gender stereotypes that students hold. Freeman (1994) found that both male and female students preferred a combination of masculine and feminine traits in their instructors and it was this that influenced their preferences, not the gender of the instructors themselves. As the education climate currently focuses on more student-centered approaches with less emphasis on traditional lectures as modes of instruction, the teaching method used in the classroom may have an important effect on student perceptions.…”

“…Freeman (1994) found no difference between male and female ratings of effectiveness, whereas Basow (2000) and Sprinkle (2008) found that female students rated female faculty higher, while male students preferred male faculty. In a recent study of online education (MacNell, Driscoll & Hunt, 2014), students rated faculty higher when they perceived the instructor to be male, regardless of the actual gender of the online instructor.…”

Student Evaluations and Gendered Expectations: What We Can't Count Can Hurt Us

“…Freeman (1994) found that students assumed a hypothetical professor was more effective when that professor was described in androgynous terms than in either "masculine" or "feminine" terms. 4 Wheeless and Potorti (1989) reported that students' descriptions of their professors as androgynous were correlated with more positive feelings about a course, the belief that they were learning more in it, and intentions to pursue similar courses in the future.…”