Female students rate female instructors more positively than male faculty

Student evaluations of instruction are based on a number of communication- related factors: clothing, oral style, and nonverbal factors such as how close the instructor stands to the students. A team of researchers at the University of Santa Clara decided to examine how students’ stereotypes of gender roles affected how they evaluated their instructors. The research team was headed by Christine M. Bachen, an assistant professor in the communication department, Moira M. McLoughlin, also an assistant professor but now deceased, and Sara S. Garcia, an associate professor in the Division of Counseling Psychology and Education. Their report appears in the July 1999 issue of Communication Education.

The researchers asked students to rate the typical male professor and the typical female professor on a set of adjectives that would characterize that instructor’s classroom behavior. The students were also asked to write comments about the differences between male and female professors at their institution.

Statistical analysis reduced the adjectives to five dimensions: caring/expressive; professional/ challenging; interactive; organized; and easy-going. Students rated female faculty higher on each of these dimensions than they did male faculty, but closer examination of the data showed that most of these differences were due to the fact that female students rated female faculty in a more positive manner, while male students tended to rate male and female faculty about equally.

In responding to the invitation to write comments, most students tended to focus on the positive and negative qualities of female faculty. Both male and female students commented on female faculty’s ability to bring a caring and expressive style to the classroom and how, for the most part, that style enhanced student perceptions that they were learning. Writing about the professional/ challenging dimension, many female students in particular commented on how female faculty were able to promote identification and use a nurturing style but still find ways of challenging students from within that style. Male students tended to see a nurturing female faculty style as weak and not professional, however.

The researchers concluded that female students’ identification with female faculty is strong and probably constitutes a measure of educational success for those students. Male students do not rate female faculty differently than male faculty, but their qualitative comments indicated that males were more comfortable with female faculty when they seemed to be adapting to more of a male style in the classroom.

Bachen, C. M., McLoughlin, M. M., & Garcia, S. S. (1999). Assessing the role of gender in college students’ evaluations of faculty. Communication Education, 48, 193-210.