Faculty Publications

Student Perception Of Instructors: The Effect Of Age, Gender And Political Leaning

Document Type

Article

Keywords

age, gender, political leaning, SET, Student evaluation of teaching

Journal/Book/Conference Title

Assessment and Evaluation in Higher Education

Volume

45

Issue

4

First Page

607

Last Page

616

Abstract

Students were asked to rank instructors, who differed by age, gender and political leaning, by their expected helpfulness, and how much a student expected to learn. Students selected older instructors as those from whom they would learn the most, but chose young instructors as the most helpful. Overall, male instructors were preferred over female instructors, especially when emphasis was placed on learning. The political leaning of the instructor was a discriminating factor in humanities classes, with liberal instructors preferred over conservatives. The preferred age, gender and political leaning patterns were distinctly different for instructors who were helpful, and from those from whom students thought they would learn the most, indicating a dichotomy between perceived helpfulness and learning. The stereotypic images of instructors did not differ significantly by the students’ own gender and academic major, except for male students ranking conservative instructors higher than females. Students do have stereotypical images of instructors based on the instructor’s age, gender and political leaning.

Original Publication Date

5-18-2020

DOI of published version

10.1080/02602938.2019.1679715

Repository

UNI ScholarWorks, Rod Library, University of Northern Iowa

Language

en

Link to Full Text

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