Thread by @realscientists

1/ Gender Bias in Student Evaluations of Teaching: ‘Punish[ing] Those Who Fail To Do Their Gender Right’

Our big #qualitative analysis (386,277 unique responses!) published in Higher Education

link.springer.com/article/10.100…

2/Our findings suggest that student evaluations of teaching seem to measure *conformity with gendered expectations* rather than teaching quality

A cause for concern given the integration of SET data into performance profiles, and management and organisation of teaching practice

3/Before I go on, in terms of the necessarily binary reporting, it is very important to say here that we recognise the ‘pluralities inherent in gender(s)’ that complicate simple binary approaches to gender (Weerawardhana, 2018, p.189), and we do discuss this in the paper

4/Overall, positive evaluation of knowledge/expertise is expressed in terms of respect and success for men:

‘Amazed by how smart he is’

‘very experienced and very competent!!!’

For women this was expressed more in terms of enthusiasm, rather than expertise.

5/Positive evaluations of best features described women teachers as ‘friendly’, ‘interesting’ and ‘nice’.

‘Nice’ featured prominently in the F ‘best features’ data set

As did speaking in a ‘nicer tone’.

6/Demanding that women teachers be ‘nice’, and rewarding ‘niceness’ with positive evaluations, creates a requirement for women teachers to undertake emotional labour inside and outside the classroom where no such requirement exists for men

7/In the M ‘best features’ data, generalised positive evaluations of men teachers described the teacher as being a ‘good bloke’, a ‘good’ or ‘nice’ guy, or a ‘legend’.

8/For women, students remarked often on how their teacher’s emotions should be regulated.

Teachers were asked to be less ‘uptight’, ‘a bit calmer’, to ‘not look so miserable or unhappy’ and to ‘relax’ or ‘smile’.

‘not being such a bitch’ (candidate quote for the paper title)

9/Men were praised for being authoritative in the same way that a high school teacher might be authoritative (directive, perhaps even didactic)

Whereas women were assessed negatively for the same practice: condescending/‘babying’/‘treated like children’ or high school students

10/Women and men were evaluated positively for being supportive & available for students, but this differed qualitatively

e.g.

For women = expectation of more time/labour *outside* of class times

For men = expectation of more energy and thoroughness *during* class times

11/In this way, we find that women are punished for failing to perform in line with gendered expectations that place demands on women to be perpetually happy, calm and never angry, permanently available, and never engaged in advocacy for their own rights.

12/This #qualitative research is supported by a quantitative analysis of data from the same population

Gender and cultural bias in student evaluations: Why representation matters

journals.plos.org/plosone/articl…

Thanks to the incredible @drljshepherd for leading on this research 🤩 Was a great team to be part of and I learned a lot about big qualitative data analysis!