Student Evaluations of College Professors: Are ...

16 downloads 116 Views 1MB Size Report
Over 1,000 male and female college students of 16 male and female professors (matched for course division, years of teaching, and tenure status) evaluated ...
Journal of Educational Psychology 1987, Vol 79, No. 3, 308-314

Copyright 1987 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-066 3/87/$OO. 75

Student Evaluations of College Professors: Are Female and Male Professors Rated Differently? Susan A. Basow and Nancy T. Silberg Lafayette College

Over 1,000 male and female college students of 16 male and female professors (matched for course division, years of teaching, and tenure status) evaluated their instructors in terms of teaching effectiveness and sex-typed characteristics. Male students gave female professors significantly poorer ratings than they gave male professors on the six teaching evaluation measures; their ratings of female professors were poorer than those of female students on four of the six measures. Female students also evaluated female professors less favorably than male professors on three measures. Student perceptions of a professor's instrumental/active and expressive/ nurturant traits, which were positively related to student ratings of teaching, accounted for only a few of these gender-related effects. Student major and student class standing also played a role in the evaluation of professors. The importance of gender variables in teacher evaluation studies is discussed, and implications for future research are noted.

Research since the 1960s has documented prejudice against women, particularly if women violate gender stereotypes, for example, by having gender-atypical characteristics or by participating in gender-atypical professions (Etaugh & Riley, 1983; Paludi & Bauer, 1983). Because college teaching is considered a high-status male occupation (Touhey, 1974) and because evaluations made by others influence advancement in such a career, it is important to determine if any biases exist in the evaluation of college professors. Most investigations of bias in the evaluation of professors have produced conflicting results. However, two variables that appear to be important are professor sex and professor sex typing. Although some studies have found relatively few or no differences in the evaluations of male and female professors on the basis of sex alone (Basow & Distenfeld, 1985; Bennett, 1982; Elmore & LaPointe, 1974, 1975), others have found a sex bias (Kaschak, 1978; Lombardo & Tocci, 1979). However, the nature of this bias seems to depend on student sex, the type of questions asked, and specific teacher qualities. For example, Kaschak (1978) examined student evaluations of professors' teaching methods as a function of teacher sex, student sex, and academic field (masculine, feminine, or neutral). She found that female students rated female and male professors as equally effective, concerned, likable, and excellent. In contrast, male students showed a consistent bias in favor of male professors. Both sexes, however, were more willing to take a course with the same-sex instructor. Lombardo and Tocci also found that male instructors were perceived as more competent than female instructors by male

students, whereas female students showed no sex bias. In a second study, Kaschak (1981) found that most of the sex bias disappeared when the professors were described as award winning. However, male professors were still described as more powerful and effective than female professors, and female professors in "feminine" fields were rated as more concerned and likable than male professors in those fields. These results suggest that gender-stereotypic qualities play a role in the evaluation of college teachers. In an effort to understand better the influence of genderstereotypic qualities on teacher evaluations, researchers have explored the effect of professor sex typing on student ratings of teachers. The findings, however, are unclear because in some cases professor sex typing interacts with student sex or professor sex. Furthermore, studies have varied considerably in methodology, with some using written descriptions and some using videotaped or real-life classroom instructors. In a study using written profiles of male and female teachers that included adjectives described as stereotypical ly masculine or feminine, Harris (1975) found that both male and female students rated teachers with "masculine" teaching styles more positively than those with "feminine" teaching styles on all measures except warmth. In a second study using a similar design, Harris (1976) reported that masculine-stereotyped teachers were evaluated more favorably at all grade levels (nursery school through college) on all measures except warmth and superiority. For warmth and superiority, professor sex typing interacted with student sex. Students of each sex preferred the teacher who possessed the traits stereotyped as appropriate for their own sex. Expressiveness is another sex-typed trait that affects evaluations of teachers, although research on teacher expressiveness has sometimes tapped the "masculine" aspect related to dynamism and sometimes the "feminine" aspect related to warmth. In general, the expressive teacher is rated more positively than the nonexpressive teacher (Abrami, Leventhal, & Perry, 1982; Basow & Distenfeld, 1985; Elmore & LaPointe, 1975; Marsh & Ware, 1982; Ware & Williams, 1975). However, a number of methodological issues arise from this line

Portions of this research were presented at the meeting of the Eastern Psychological Association, Boston, March 1985. We would like to express our gratitude to the participants in this study as well as to the anonymous reviewers of this article for their helpful comments. Nancy T. Silberg is now at the University of Vermont. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Susan A. Basow, Psychology Department, Lafayette College, Easton, Pennsylvania 18042. 308

309

STUDENT EVALUATIONS

of research. Not only has the definition of teacher expressiveness and the way in which the teacher is presented varied from study to study, but most of this research has used male instructors. In the few studies that have examined teacher sex, interactions between teacher expressiveness and teacher sex have been found. However, the nature of these interactions appears to depend on the precise definition of expressiveness/ warmth and the particular questions asked (Basow & Distenfeld, 1985; Elmore & LaPointe, 1974, 1975). For example, Basow and Distenfeld found that expressiveness was most important for male teachers on two factors—organization and stimulating student interest. Another problem with studies that have examined the influence of sex-stereotyped qualities on performance ratings of teachers may be that these studies deal with only one stereotyped quality at a time. Because people can be high in warmth/expressiveness and either low or high in instrumental/active qualities (Bern, 1981), the influence of a combination of these personal qualities could be expected. In a laboratory study, Basow and Howe (1987) addressed this issue and found that both instrumental and affective qualities are important in evaluating professors but that affective qualities are more important. These results were supported in a recent field study by Erdle, Murray, and Rushton (1985), who found that both achievement-related personality traits (such as dominance) and interpersonal-related personality traits (such as supportiveness) were related to global student evaluations. However, nearly all the faculty used in this study were male. Bennett (1982) investigated the effect of both sex and sex role variables on teaching evaluations in a study that used student ratings of actual teachers. The results suggested that sex role stereotypes influence evaluations of female professors but not those of male professors. According to Bennett's study, greater demands for student contact and support are placed on female professors than on male professors, and female professors' higher ratings of warmth, potency, or both account for their more positive evaluations on interpersonal aspects of teaching. In addition, a highly structured instructional approach is more important for teaching performance ratings of female professors than of male professors. Bennett did not find evidence of direct sex bias in student evaluations of teachers. Bennett's study is important because it provides information concerning the effects of sex and sex-stereotypic variables on teaching evaluation in an actual classroom situation. Nevertheless, methodological differences make comparisons with other research in this area difficult. For example, unlike other research, Bennett's did not directly measure professor sex typing. Moreover, results from Bennett's study as well as those from other studies (e.g., Elmore & LaPointe, 1974, 1975) were based on students' responses to individual items of a teacher rating form. It has been suggested that because teaching effectiveness is multifaceted, evaluation instruments that have a well-defined factor structure will provide more information about teaching effectiveness than would responses to individual items (Marsh, 1984). Given the confusion in the literature, further examination of the effects of sex and sex typing on ratings of college professors is warranted. It is particularly important to clarify how these variables operate in an actual classroom setting. To

this end, the present study used a field design to determine the effects of professor sex and professor sex typing on male and female students' evaluations of college professors. On the basis of previous research, we hypothesized that professor sex would interact with student sex (Kaschak, 1978; Lombardo & Tocci, 1979) such that female professors would be rated more poorly by male but not female students and that professor sex typing would be a significant variable in the evaluation of professors (Basow & Howe, 1987; Bennett, 1982). We hypothesized that instrumental/active and expressive/nurturant traits would affect teaching performance ratings.

Method Subjects Over half the student body of a small selective private college in the northeastern United States received the 1,293 questionnaires. Because 213 questionnaires were eliminated due to incomplete responses, the final sample consisted of 553 men and 527 women. Some students participated in the study more than once. The sex ratio of the sample (51 % male and 49% female) was similar to that of the college population (57% male), as were the class levels (21% freshman, 22% sophomores, 30% juniors, and 26% seniors). A full range of major fields of study was present, with 48% of the students majoring in the social sciences, 19% in the natural sciences, 14% in engineering, 5% in the humanities, and 9% undecided. Engineering majors were underrepresented, and social science majors were overrepresented in the sample. (At the college, about one third of the students majored in engineering, and an equal number majored in the social sciences). Men and women differed significantly in their major field of study, x2(6, N = 1029) = 50.63, p < .001, with more humanities majors being female and more engineering majors being male. This distribution of male and female students by major, was characteristic of the college population.

Materials Teacher rating form. A teacher rating form (Leventhal, Perry, & Abrami, 1977, adapted from Hildebrand & Wilson, 1970) was used to measure students' perceptions of teacher appeal and teacher effectiveness. The rating form is composed of 26 questions rated on a 5point Likert scale ranging from well above average (1) to well below average (5). Question 1 related to overall teaching ability ranging from outstanding (1) to poor and inadequate (5). The remaining questions were equally divided among five factors: Scholarship, Organization/Clarity, Instructor-Group Interaction, Instructor-Individual Student Interaction, Dynamism/Enthusiasm. Personality inventory. The short form of the Bern Sex-Role Inventory (BSR1; Bern, 1981) was used to measure students' perceptions of their instructors' instrumental/active traits ("masculine" traits, such as assertive, dominant) and nurturant/expressive traits ("feminine" traits, such as warm, understanding) on two separate scales. Ratings of the 30 items were made on a 7-point Likert scale ranging from never or almost never true (1) to always or almost always true (7).

Procedure Each of the 22 female professors at the college who were at the assistant professor rank or above and who had taught full-time at least 1 year at the college was matched, if possible, with a male

310

SUSAN A. BASOW AND NANCY T. SILBERG

professor. Matches were made on the basis of rank, course division (i.e., humanities, social science, or natural science), and years of experience at the college to minimize differences between male and female professors and prevent a selection bias. Of the 19 pairs of professors whom we approached individually and asked to help us in a research project on students* perceptions of teachers, 16 pairs (70% of the female faculty and 13% of the male faculty) agreed to participate. There were no significant differences between the female and male professors in the sample in terms of age, years at the college, rank, or course division. The distribution of professors by the course division in which they taught (28% in humanities, 47% in social sciences, and 25% in natural sciences) wasrepresentativeof the female faculty but not of the college: Social science professors, who constitute 20% of the faculty, were overrepresented, and engineering professors, who constitute 20% of the faculty, were not represented at all. The tenure status of the group (25% of each sex) was representative of the tenure status of female professors at the college (26%) but not of the male professors (60%). Each professor was evaluated by his or her students during the 5th or 6th week of a 14-week semester. A female experimenter distributed the teacher rating form and BSRI in counterbalanced order to students in 78 classes at the beginning or end of class. Each professor was rated by an average of 33 students; only two professors (both female) were rated by fewer than 10 students. The study was described as an investigation of students* perceptions of their professors. Those students who did not wish to participate or who had already evaluated the particular professor were asked not to complete the questionnaires. Anonymity of responses was emphasized.

Results A two-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA; Teacher Sex X Student Sex) was performed by using individual student ratings on Question 1 (overall teaching ability) and all five factors of the teacher rating form (see Table 1 for summary table). There was a significant overall Teacher Sex x Student Sex interaction that is supported by all the univariate analyses except for Instructor-Individual Student interaction. Because all the dependent measures were intercorrelated (r ~ .S7-.88), standard&ed discriminant function coefficients were calculated. As shown in Table 1, Scholarship, Organization/Garity, and Dynamism/Enthusiasm contributed most strongly to the

discriminant function for the Teacher Sex x Student Sex interaction and in a direction opposite to that of Instructorindividual Student Interaction. Despite statistical significance, the effect sizes (mz) for these interactions are all less than .01, indicating that less than 1% of the total variance in the scores is accounted for by the two-way interaction. The means (see Table 2) indicate that male students gave significantly different ratings as a function of professor sex, whereas female students rated male and female professors more similarly. Post hoc t tests on the interaction means revealed that male students gave female professors significantly (p < .05) less positive ratings than they gave male professors on all dependent measures. Male students also rated female professors significantly (p< .01} more negatively than did female students on Scholarship, Organization/Clarity, Dynamism/Enthusiasm, and overall teaching ability. However, female students rated female professors significantly more negatively than they rated male professors on Instructor-Individual Student Interaction (p < .01), Dynamism/ Enthusiasm {p < .05), and overall teaching ability (p < .01). The significant multivariate Teacher Sex x Student Sex interaction clarified the significant multivariate main effect for teacher sex (see Table I). The standardized discriminant function coefficients indicate that Dynamism/Enthusiasm and overall teaching ability contribute the most to group separation and in an opposite direction than does InstructorGroup Interaction, which was not significant in the univariate analyses. Instructor-Individual Student Interaction, not significant in the interaction test, was significant as a main effect. Both male and female students gave male professors better ratings on this measure. The effect sizes (w2) are all low, with the strongest effects due to teacher sex occurring in scores on overall teaching ability (accounting for 3.4% of the variance) and Dynamism/Enthusiasm (3%). Student sex was not a significant main effect in the multivariate analysis, although it was significant on the univariate test of Scholarship (p < .05). This finding of better ratings given by female students needs to be interpreted in the light of the significant two-way interaction on this factor. Because students* perceptions of their professors' instrumental/active and expressive/nurturant personality traits as

Table 1 Two-Way MANOVA Summary Table With Effect Sizes (m2) and Standardized Discriminant Function Coefficients (Discrim.) Multivariate*

Univariate"

2

4 3 5 Overall 1,44 F 10.63** 34.64*** 39.71*** 9.H**