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College students' views of male and female college teachers: Part II—Evidence from students' evaluations of their classroom teachers

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Abstract

Although a majority of studies have found that male and female college teachers do not differ in the global ratings they receive from their students, when statistically significant differences are found, more of them favor women than men. Across studies, the average association between gender and overall evaluation, while favoring women (averager=+.02), is so small as to be insignificant in practical terms. Considering specific instructional dimensions of evaluations, female teachers receive very slightly higher ratings on their sensitivity to and concern with class level and progress than do men (averager=+.12). On other specific dimensions, men and women either do not differ or the differences are trivial in size (or, for two dimensions, while nontrivial, based on too few studies to be generalizable with any degree of certainty). Students tend to rate same-gendered teachers a little higher than opposite-gendered teachers. Although interaction effects on evaluations have also been found between gender of teacher and other factors (academic rank of the teacher, academic area, class level of the course, difficulty of the teacher or course, and the teacher's pedagogical orientation or personality characteristics), they are inconsistent across studies. Moreover, ratings of teachers are sometimes enhanced by gender-typical, and sometimes by gender-atypical, attributes, behaviors, and positions. The findings are discussed in terms of the expectations or demands of students and whether or not student ratings are biased by the gender of the teacher.

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  1. Department of Sociology, State University of New York at Stony Brook, 11794-4356, Stony Brook, NY

    Kenneth A. Feldman

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Feldman, K.A. College students' views of male and female college teachers: Part II—Evidence from students' evaluations of their classroom teachers. Res High Educ 34, 151–211 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00992161

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