The Influence of Gender on University Faculty Members' Perceptions of "Good" Teaching
by Laura D. Goodwin and Ellen A. Stevens
Laura D. Goodwin is associate dean and professor of education and Ellen A. Stevens is assistant professor of education at the School of Education, University of Colorado at Denver.
WHAT IS “GOOD” teaching? The question has been asked numerous times and has been addressed from many different perspectives. Although there is no clearly definitive answer to the question, there are some generally accepted characteristics of “good” teachers and teaching situations: enthusiasm, knowledge of the subject area, stimulation of interest in the subject area, organization, clarity, concern and caring for students, use of higher cognitive levels in discussions and examinations, use of visual aids, encouragement of active learning and student discussion, provision of feedback, and avoidance of harsh criticim.
This list has largely been generated from studies that explored college and university students’ opinions about effective teaching, as well as from some that explored the opinions of elementary and secondary teachers. In addition to teacher characteristics, Dr. Wilbert McKeachie noted almost thirty years ago how difficult it was to define and measure the appropriate outcomes of “good” teaching, and this is still a major concern and unsolved problem today.
We investigated the nature and extent of any relationships between the gender of the faculty respondents and perceptions about good teaching and the appropriate outcomes of good teaching. What differences, if any, exist between male and female faculty members in their opinions about effective teaching is a timely question, and one that few researchers have investigated — although there has been a fairly large number of publications in the last decade or so that have dealt with the status of women in academic settings and with gender differences as perceived by students.
Many authors have noted the increase in the number of women faculty members. Statistics show that women represented about one-fifth of all university faculty twenty-five years ago, and about one-third by 1990. As these authors have pointed out, however, real differences continue to exist in terms of such factors as proportionate representation by discipline or field, salary, rank, part-time versus full-time employment, and type of appointment (tenure-track versus non-tenure track).
Women tend to be segregated by discipline and by institutional type; to be disproportionately represented at lower ranks; to get promoted at a slower rate than their male colleagues; to participate less in governance and administration; and to be compensated at a rate that averaged only 85 percent of that of their male colleagues.
Differences such as these have led some authors to use the term “chilly” to describe the academic climate experienced by women faculty members The research on gender differences as perceived by students has produced some conflicting results. tors that could account for the conflicting results across these studies.
A number of researchers have reported no significant differences between male and female professors’ evaluations due to gender differences alone, others have found female professors receiving somewhat higher ratings than males. By contrast, Wilson and Doyle found that male professors tended to receive significantly higher ratings on clarity of presentation than did female professors.
Basow and Silberg conducted a study involving one thousand students in classes taught by sixteen male and female professors; the professors were matched for type of course, years of teaching experience, and tenure status. Findings included significantly lower ratings of female professors by male students — compared to ratings of male professors by male students — on six evaluative dimensions.
The female students also rated female professors less positively than male professors. These authors pointed out that male students’ lower ratings of female professors might be attributed, at least in part, to the fact that college teaching is generally considered a male occupation.
Compared to the amount of published research findings pertaining to gender differences in student ratings, there is a dearth of information about actual differences between male and female professors in their teaching practices or methods. A few studies have investigated differences in communication styles between male and female instructors.
One study reported that female professors tended to generate more class discussion, more interaction, and more give-and-take than male professors. Similarly, in a review article, Treichler and Kramarae wrote that, “At the college level, investigators . . . consistently report more interaction in classes taught by women, with more student input, more teacher and student questions, and more feedback.” After analyzing data from a fairly large-scale study of sixty classrooms, researchers Macke, Richardson, and Cook discovered that there were greater levels of student participation in classes taught by women — regardless of department, course level, class size, and ratio of female to male students.
However, the more student participation that was generated, the less competent the instructors were rated by the students. Finally, what do we know about professors’ own perceptions of what constitutes “good” teaching and about differences and similarities between male and female professors in such perceptions? We found very few works that attempted to answer this specific question. Miron [44] surveyed fifty-one Israeli instructors regarding their conception of the characteristics of the “good professor.” The answers given most frequently included the ability to stimulate intellectual curiosity and develop thought processes and the preparation and organization of lessons.
Again, then, the major purpose of our study was to investigate similarities and differences between female and male professors in their attitudes toward teaching, especially toward “good” teaching. The general areas about which we wanted to obtain opinions included: the behaviors and characteristics that constitute “good” teaching, the appropriate outcomes of good teaching, attitudes toward various teaching and grading practices, and favored teaching and grading methods. In addition to studying gender differences, we were secondarily interested in investigating the extent of differences according to campus, rank, and discipline.
Differences by Campus, Rank, and Discipline
As expected, there were statistically significant relationships between gender and both rank and discipline. For the gender-by-rank comparison, 46.2 percent of the males were full professors, 29.1 percent were associate professors, and 24.7 percent were assistant professors. Among the females, 22.8 percent were full professors, 34.2 percent were associate professors, and 43.0 percent were assistant professors.
The five groups were arts and humanities; social sciences and education; sciences, mathematics, and engineering; professional schools (business, public affairs, and law); and health sciences (nursing, medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy). Proportionately, the largest difference between numbers of female and male respondents was in the sciences, mathematics, and engineering group (90 percent male and 10 percent female).
In the arts and humanities group, by contrast, 54.1 percent were male professors and 45.9 percent were female professors. When we analyzed the responses to the questionnaire items separately by campus, rank, and discipline, we found virtually no significant differences by campus. By rank, there also were few statistically significant differences in the mean responses to the items. The significant differences that emerged all showed the same pattern: significantly lower means for the full professors as compared to the associate or assistant professors.
We were somewhat surprised that relatively few significant gender differences were found. The significant differences that emerged showed that the female respondents tended to agree more strongly than the male respondents about the extent to which “good” teachers are concerned about students higher-order thinking skills, are concerned about their self-esteem, encourage student interaction via small-group activities, seek a variety of learning levels via exams and discussions, and use a variety of visual aids.
The mean for the males was higher, although not significantly, for one characteristic: being enthusiastic about teaching. the females with the statement, “Student course evaluations provide useful in formation for course improvement purposes.” The similarity in findings between the two studies (in terms of non-significant differences, too) showed some support for the external validity of our findings. The higher usefulness ratings for the female professors in table 5 for some activities — having other faculty observe their teaching, observing other faculty themselves, working with a consultant on their teaching, and attending workshops on teaching — were also consistent with findings reported by Chism [13]. Female professors seem to place greater value than male professors on seeking “outside” help from peers and others. In general, too, the respondents thought that feedback from students and from faculty, experimenting on their own, and observation were potentially useful activities for improving teaching. However, the other factors — reading about teaching, attending workshops, and working with a consultant — received lower usefulness ratings.
In general, the findings suggest that female professors might place greater value or importance on, or be more interested in, enhancing students’ self-esteem and in encouraging student interaction and participation in class. Female professors also appear to be more interested in seeking “outside” assistance in attempting to improve their teaching; male professors appear to place greater value on students’ evaluations than females. However, all professors seem to share similar views about what constitutes “good” teaching, and about the appropriate outcomes of “good” teaching.
