The consequences of teaching critical sociology on course evaluations

Abstract

While there has been a great deal of literature addressing students' perceptions of bias in the classroom, there has been little in the way of examining the relationship between the student evaluations and the pedagogy used to examine sociological issues in class. We conducted a case study that reviewed and coded the written comments on Professor Prew's Introduction to Sociology course evaluations in the 2008-2009 academic year. We assessed whether there was a correlation between the quantitative feedback on evaluations and the open-ended comments regarding the professor's critical sociological perspective. Using means, ANOVA, and correlations, we specifically tested to see if students who left qualitative comments that contain overtly negative assessments of Professor Prew's critical sociological perspective evaluated the course more negatively than those who are neutral or complimentary regarding his perspective. The findings show a positive correlation between negative attitudes regarding critical sociology and lower evaluation scores. © The Author(s) 2013.