Do professor’s age and gender matter or do students give higher value to professors’ experience?

Abstract

Purpose Many higher education institutions (HEIs) have constructed their internal evaluation systems to secure teaching quality. This paper aims to analyze teaching quality, HEIs use students to evaluate their professors as they have direct contact with the professors during the whole semester. The authorities hope to receive valuable information, which can be used for many administrative purposes. The bias in the evaluation toward professors’ gender and attractiveness has already been proven. However, there is only limited evidence whether students give higher value to teaching quality over the professors’ personality. Design/methodology/approach In this paper, the authors go further in the gender-attractiveness evidence and put the evaluation in contrast with professors’ experience, age, etc. Findings The results indicate that the effect of experience predominates the effect of gender and in some areas also the effect of age. What is more, a semester in which a course is taken also influences the evaluation as different professors’ abilities are required in teaching in a different semester. On the other hand, the results do not fully confirm the effect of gender on the evaluation. Originality/value The results reveal that it is important to consider the course structure to assign professors to the right courses.

Bias in Student Ratings of Instruction: A Systematic Review of Research from 2012 to 2021

“…A simulation study highlighted that even when SRI scores appear valid and reliable, they can often mis-identify poor and good instructors (Esarey & Valdes, 2020). We echo other researchers in arguing that it is imperative that instructors use more than this lone source of information to inform their teaching development plans (Flegl & Andrade Rosas, 2019;Weidman-Evans et al, 2020). Bias in SRIs also effects the usefulness of SRI results to inform and enhance instructors' teaching practices and make course improvements, which may impact students' educational experiences and outcomes.…”

“…The existence of gender bias was the most consistent and prominent finding across the studies we reviewed. Student ratings of female instructors were lower than those for their male counterparts (Al-Maamari, 2015;Chávez, 2020;Fan et al, 2019;Fassiotto et al, 2018;Flegl & Andrade Rosas, 2019;Martin, 2016;Mitchell & Martin, 2018;Radchenko, 2020;Wagner et al, 2016) and written comments for female instructors used less professional language and were more likely to focus on appearance and personality (Mitchell & Martin, 2018). Interestingly, when students are made aware of issues related to gender bias, male students rated female instructors higher than when they were not made aware of such bias (Peterson et al, 2019).…”

“…Students who were fond of Stoesz et al their instructors provided higher SRI scores than those not fond of their instructors (Feistauer & Richter, 2018b); this association was not related to SRI completion rate (Macfadyen et al, 2016). Students also provided higher ratings to instructors with more years of experience, but the benefit of experience was limited as older professors were rated lower (Bianchini et al, 2013;Flegl & Andrade Rosas, 2019). In contrast, one study showed little evidence of an association between instructor rank and SRI scores (Sulis et al, 2019).…”

“…Courses perceived as more difficult were rated lower (Tarun & Krueger, 2016) and instructors of quantitative methods courses, which are often perceived as difficult, were rated lower than instructors of other courses, even though many aspects of quantitative methods courses were preferred by students (Royal & Stockdale, 2015). Students also evaluated higher-level courses more positively than lower-level courses (Ewing, 2012;Flegl & Andrade Rosas, 2019;Liu, 2012;Nargundkar & Shrikhande, 2014;Socha, 2013;Yueh et al, 2012).…”

Factors of Quality Assessment in Higher Education and Its Impact on Business Students’ Development and Interest in University Education

“…Overall, the teacher is usually perceived as one of the key factors in student quality assessment, as he or she is the one who has the greatest impact on educational performance and the likelihood of successful completion of studies (Wachtel, 1998;Tram and Williamson, 2009;Flegl and Andrade Rosas, 2019).…”