The Fair Process Effect in the Classroom: Reducing the Influence of Grades on Student Evaluations of Teachers

Research findings tend to confirm anecdotal observations that instructors’ teaching evaluations are influenced by students’ grades, making some instructors feel pressured to reduce the academic rigor of their course in an attempt to get higher evaluations. To reduce this pressure, the current study tested whether distributive justice may explain the relationship between grades and student evaluation of teaching (SET) and how the fair process effect may moderate the relationship between distributive justice perceptions regarding grades and SET. Relying on the extant literature of procedural justice, we hypothesized that when students perceive no fair process that determines their grades, then: (a) the relationship between distributive justice perceptions and SET will be stronger and (b) the indirect effect of grades on SET via distributive justice perceptions will be stronger. Conversely, under conditions of strong fair process perceptions, these relationships will be attenuated. Using a survey of undergraduates’ perceptions of course fairness, we found support for our proposed hypotheses. We discuss the implications of our findings for higher education faculty.

Gender Bias in Student Evaluations

ABSTRACTMany universities use student evaluations of teachers (SETs) as part of consideration for tenure, compensation, and other employment decisions. However, in doing so, they may be engaging in discriminatory practices against female academics. This study further explores the relationship between gender and SETs described by MacNell, Driscoll, and Hunt (2015) by using both content analysis in student-evaluation comments and quantitative analysis of students’ ordinal scoring of their instructors. The authors show that the language students use in evaluations regarding male professors is significantly different than language used in evaluating female professors. They also show that a male instructor administering an identical online course as a female instructor receives higher ordinal scores in teaching evaluations, even when questions are not instructor-specific. Findings suggest that the relationship between gender and teaching evaluations may indicate that the use of evaluations in employment decisions is discriminatory against women.

Department Self-Esteem and Attitudes towards Student Evaluations of Teachers

Evaluation is an important part of education process at school. It plays a significant role in the development of school culture. This document deals with the terms connected with the evaluation process in teaching. It studied department self-esteem and attitudes towards student’s evaluations of teaching in Mauritian secondary schools. The aim was to examine their opinions and attitudes to evaluation. Furthermore, the researcher tried to identify variables which could be linked to positive or negative attitudes towards evaluation. After several years of teaching experiences the researcher has tried to connect educators’ attitudes towards evaluation in their classrooms, whereas other examined factors showed no significant differences in educators’ attitudes.

Razlike u studentskim procjenama važnosti karakteristika nastavnika s obzior na spol i godinu studija

This research examined the differences in student evaluations of importance of teacher characteristics accross gender and different years of study. The research was implemented on a sample of N=197 students of the second and fourth year (i.e. first year of the second cycle) of study at the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security and the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Sarajevo. The Questionnaire on the evaluation of desireable characteristics and behaviors of teachers in the teaching process, containing 83 items, was used as a research tool. Results of ANOVA showed statistically significant difference between students of different years of study on a small number of items (N=15), while number of items with significant statistical differences between genders was much larger (N=45). Implications of these findings for student evaluations of teachers and improvement of teacher quality are reviewed. Results of these and other simillar researches can be important source of informations that could be useful for teachers in better understanding students needs and improving their work.

The Effect of Student Evaluations on Academic Success

This article uses longitudinal student-level data from the American University of Sharjah, a large comprehensive university in the Middle East, to examine the relationship between student evaluations of teachers and current and future student achievement. Our model strategies control for the observed and unobserved heterogeneity of students and use unique instruments. We find that when all disciplines are examined together there is a positive relationship between current evaluation and current grade point average (GPA) but a negative relationship between past evaluations and current GPA. Discipline-specific estimations find the same results in the math and science course subsample, but for other course types there is little relation between evaluation and GPA.

Preliminary Evidence On The Relation Between Mid-Semester Instructor Feedback And Students Perceptions Of Class And Instructor Variables

Student evaluations of teachers (SETs) are commonly used in many universities as a measure of instructor performance. However, there is controversy regarding the validity of SETs. Research has identified and studied many variables that might affect students ratings of teachers and their perceptions of the class environment, and the results are mixed regarding the relation among and effects of the variables. Obtaining mid-semester instructor feedback might affect how students perceive the instructor, especially if a particular concern is consistently identified and the instructor responds to the concern. Additionally, student performance might increase. Thus, mid-semester instructor feedback is one variable that might have a significant impact on SETs but it has gone unstudied. This paper contains the results of a study designed to determine the impact of mid-semester instructor feedback on student evaluations of the instructor and various variables of the class environment. The results indicate that students in classes that used the feedback (IF) did not perform better than students in classes that did not use the feedback (NIF); however, students gave higher ratings to the instructor and certain class variables in the IF courses than in the NIF courses.