Student Perceptions of Student Evaluations of Teaching

Abstract

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are widely used instruments in higher education. Faculty rely upon SETs to improve their courses, and administrative faculty use them to make decisions about instructors’ tenure, promotions and to measure instructor performance. Due to their importance in higher education SETs have been highly scrutinized and there have been numerous studies spanning several decades researching the measures to study their validity and reliability. The current study sought to look at sexism and how that relates to students’ perceptions of SETs. To measure the relationship between sexism and student perceptions an instrument called the Student Evaluation of Teaching Behaviors Scale (SET-B) was developed by the researcher and used in conjunction with the Ambivalent Sexism Inventory. An exploratory factor analysis revealed three prominent factors from the SET-B instrument: Biasing Behaviors, Instructor Improvements, and Use of SETs. A regression analysis of ambivalent sexism scores and the three SET-B factors revealed a significant, positive relationship between ambivalent sexism and the biasing behaviors factor. While no other significant relationships were found, the fact that a positive relationship exist between higher scores on ambivalent sexism positively predicts higher scores in biasing behaviors warrants extreme caution be taken by administrative faculty and warrants further investigation into the relationship between problematic behaviors and ways to mitigate those behaviors.