Institutions of higher learning will develop strategies that are applicable in evaluating their instructors to determine whether their teaching strategies have been and are effective. Such evaluations will be given to students who rate their professors according to certain aspects mentioned in the tool the students use. Students are often considered the best placed to carry out such evaluations because they have experienced the teaching and instructor strategies first-hand. Institutions will develop such evaluation tools using different questions or items that help scrutinize the professor’s teaching abilities and overall conduct while in and out of class. Nonetheless, it would be highly likely that other factors may contribute affect how students answer on various items in the evaluation tools. It is therefore necessary to identify how do social characteristics such as the race, gender, age, and appearance of university professor’s effect student evaluations of teaching? Social characteristics like race, gender, age and appearance of the professor will affect students’ evaluation of the professor.
I demonstrate my thesis by doing three things. First I will show why student evaluation of the professor is important. Second I will focus on various personal social characteristics including race, gender and age will affect student evaluation results of the professor. Finally, I focus on determining how the appearance of the professor will affect these evaluations. I conclude by summarizing my main findings and raising some unanswered questions requiring future research.
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The Importance of Professor Evaluation by Students
As first-hand recipients of the teaching strategies and content presented by professors, students are best placed to assess and evaluate how competent these instructors are. Mainly, it will be evident in how the students interact with the professor during class ( Thawabieh, 2017) . How the students feel the professor is being effective and the level to which they believe they grasp the course material from how the professor teaches. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that these evaluations are important for the overall improvement of instruction and the learning experiences of students. Evaluations will be crucial in highlighting the areas of improvement for the professors as they will determine where students feel they were insufficient. They also promote accountability among professors because they will need to maintain high standards of instruction to ensure students are well educated and resonate well with the content they learn ( Hartford, 2017) . Institution administrations will have a point of reference upon which they can identify how professional and effective the professor is. The evaluations also ensure that institutions have foundations for future hiring decisions. Even so, analysis of the evaluation process is often governed by various social aspects present in the professor to a certain extent.
Professor’s Race, Gender, Age and Student Evaluation
Research indicates that race, gender and age will affect how students evaluate their professors. Race will have a significant impact in numerous decisions in society and professor evaluation is one among such decisions ( Hartford, 2017) . With the issue of race rampant across the US and other western regions, it is highly likely that it would represent a considerable aspect of how students evaluate their professors. Students tend to lean favorably towards a professor that is from their race when compared to any other. It is an indication that a Caucasian student would evaluate a Caucasian professor more positively when compared to how the student evaluates a professor of color. It is similar for how an African-American or Latino student would evaluate a professor from their race. However, it does not mean that students will be negative in evaluating the professor based on race but that the level of positivity and likeability would significantly increase if the professor is from a similar race as the student ( Hartford, 2017) . Gender is no different from race. Research indicates that students will be more favorable when evaluating a professor who is from a similar gender. Other studies indicate that male students will be more favorable when evaluating female professors than female students would do for female professors ( Dev & Qayyum, 2017) . There will be exceptions of professors who are exemplary at their work and such instructors may not be affected by issues of race or gender when being evaluated by their students. Age too would play a significant role in the evaluation process. Research indicates that students will evaluate their professor more positively depending on how close they are in age to the students ( Dev & Qayyum, 2017) . Young students will be more favorable when evaluating younger professors while older students will evaluate older professors more favorably. It is evident that aspects of race, gender and age play significant roles in how students evaluate their professors. Even so, a factor like the professor’s appearance will also impact on how the student evaluates the professor.
Professor’s Appearance and Student Evaluation
Appearance is a critical aspect that will determine how people will judge an individual. Society is highly likely to pass along varied judgments towards an individual based on how he or she looks ( Aruguete, Slater & Mwaikinda, 2017) . Some of these judgments may be warranted while others may reveal as prejudice or discrimination of some sort. This is not different for professors and how their student s will evaluate them. Research indicates that students are highly likely to comment more on the appearance of their female professor than they would of her male counterpart ( Aruguete, Slater & Mwaikinda, 2017) . It is an indication that female professors have a high likelihood of being evaluated positively or negatively as determined by their appearance, than their male counterparts. It means that for male professors, their appearance, including how they dress and their overall grooming, would not make a significant difference in how they are evaluated by their students. Further, research shows that those comments founded on issues of appearance especially for female professors would be more negative than they would be positive ( Aruguete, Slater & Mwaikinda, 2017) . Evaluation on appearance would be more gendered as students make comments that relate to appearance based on the professor’s gender to a great extent (Peterson et al., 2019). In many instances, appearance may not be such a strong determinant in evaluating male professors. It however presents a significant point of reference for how students rate their female professors. Even when some studies indicate that female students would evaluate their female professors more positively than they would the male or that male students would evaluate female professors more favorably, appearance would result in more prejudiced comments on the female professor and thus a more negative evaluation outcome for female professors from both male and female students.
It is undeniable that the evaluation of professors presents a crucial step in accountability and overall decision making in institutions of higher learning. Students are best placed to conduct such evaluations as they have interacted with their instructor’s teaching methodology and understand its strengths and weaknesses. Nonetheless, the process will be affected by various social characteristics like age, gender, race and appearance. Students will evaluate a professor from their race more favorably than they would for one who is not from their race. Some studies recognize that students will evaluate professors from a similar gender to that of the student while others show that male students will evaluate female professors more favorably. Young students will evaluate young professors more positively while older students will evaluate older professors more positively. Appearance also marks a significant aspect in student evaluation as female professors will be judged from their appearance by students while such a characteristic may never be considered when evaluating male professors. It would be important for future studies to focus on why appearance makes such a significant difference for students’ evaluation of female professors when it is almost absent in the evaluation of the male professors.
References
Aruguete, M. S., Slater, J., & Mwaikinda, S. R. (2017). The Effects of Professors’ Race and Clothing Style on Student Evaluations. The Journal of Negro Education , 86 (4), 494-502.
Dev, S. S., & Qayyum, N. (2017). Major factors affecting students’ perception towards faculty evaluation of teaching (SET). Journal of Social Studies Education Research , 8 (3), 149-167.
Hartford, K. M. (2017). The Effect of Student Evaluations on Faculty Performance (Doctoral dissertation, Northeastern University).
Peterson, D. A., Biederman, L. A., Andersen, D., Ditonto, T. M., & Roe, K. (2019). Mitigating gender bias in student evaluations of teaching. PloS one , 14 (5).
Thawabieh, A. M. (2017). Students Evaluation of Faculty. International Education Studies , 10 (2).
