All-Knowing or All-Nurturing? Student Expectations, Gender Roles, and Practical Suggestions for Women in the Classroom*

Abstract

Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) often have important effects on promotion, tenure, and merit raises, even if only through the negative effects that poor evaluations can have on these decisions (Langbein 1994). SETs can be affected by student characteristics (class, GPA, major, expected grade, gender), class characteristics (size, required, discipline, quantitative), and professor characteristics (age, gender, race, ethnicity, personality traits). Both experiments and analysis of end-of-semester SETs in a range of disciplines and institutional settings have been used to examine the effects of each of these characteristics and the interactions among them to understand the factors that produce higher SETs.