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Gender, ethnicity and teaching evaluations: Evidence from mixed teaching teams
ARTICLE

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Economics of Education Review Volume 54, Number 1, ISSN 0272-7757 Publisher: Elsevier Ltd

Abstract

This paper studies the effect of teacher gender and ethnicity on student evaluations of teaching at university. We analyze a unique data-set featuring mixed teaching teams and a diverse, multicultural, multi-ethnic group of students and teachers. Blended co-teaching allows us to study the link between student evaluations of teaching and teacher gender as well as ethnicity exploiting within course variation in a panel data model with course-year fixed effects. We document a negative effect of being a female teacher on student evaluations of teaching, which amounts to roughly one fourth of the sample standard deviation of teaching scores. Overall women are 11 percentage points less likely to attain the teaching evaluation cut-off for promotion to associate professor compared to men. The effect is robust to a host of co-variates such as course leadership, teacher experience and research quality, as well as an alternative teacher fixed effect specification. There is no evidence of a corresponding ethnicity effect. Our results are suggestive of a gender bias against female teachers and indicate that the use of teaching evaluations in hiring and promotion decisions may put female lectures at a disadvantage.

Citation

Wagner, N., Rieger, M. & Voorvelt, K. (2016). Gender, ethnicity and teaching evaluations: Evidence from mixed teaching teams. Economics of Education Review, 54(1), 79-94. Elsevier Ltd. Retrieved June 5, 2023 from .

This record was imported from Economics of Education Review on March 1, 2019. Economics of Education Review is a publication of Elsevier.

Full text is availabe on Science Direct: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.econedurev.2016.06.004

Keywords

References

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