Evaluating Gender Bias in Ratings of University Instructors’ Teaching Effectiveness

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the gender bias in student ratings of effective teaching. Students in five colleges were invited to rate instructors on three factors: interpersonal characteristics, pedagogical characteristics, and course content characteristics. We analyzed group differences based on student gender, instructor gender, and student level. Ratings of pedagogical characteristics and course content characteristics yielded significant interactions between student gender and instructor gender, but no differences were found among groups on interpersonal characteristics. We concluded that gender bias plays a role in students’ views of effective teaching in terms of how students evaluate pedagogical and content characteristics and that this bias generalizes across student levels.