Welcome to the December edition of the STEM LEAF/ADVANCE Newsletter – the ADVANCE Team hopes everyone is able to have a restful break!
Because it’s student evaluation season, this month we’ll focus on some related literature.
Resources/News
Sexism, racism, prejudice, and bias: a literature review and synthesis of research surrounding student evaluations of courses and teaching report by Troy Heffernan
“This paper has shown that no university, and indeed the higher education sector as a whole, can declare to be a gender equal employer or have an interest in growing a safe, inclusive and diverse workforce if they continue using SETs to evaluate course and teacher quality.”
The Skinny on Teaching Evals and Bias by Colleen Flaherty for Inside Higher Ed
“Perhaps most important, Kreitzer said, she and Sweet-Cushman found conforming to prescribed gender roles has a more significant effect than gender itself. This is “deeply concerning because students prefer professors with masculine traits, yet penalize women for not conforming to stereotypes.””
The above article is based on this paper:
Evaluating Student Evaluations of Teaching: a Review of Measurement and Equity Bias in SETs and Recommendations for Ethical Reform by Rebecca J. Kreitzer & Jennie Sweet-Cushman
“Student Evaluations of Teaching (SETs) have low or no correlation with learning. Furthermore, scholars using different data and different methodologies routinely find that women faculty, faculty of color, and other marginalized groups are subject to a disadvantage in SETs.”
Availability of cookies during an academic course session affects evaluation of teaching by Hessler, M., Pöpping, D.M., Hollstein, H., Ohlenburg, H., Arnemann, P.H., Massoth, C., Seidel, L.M., Zarbock, A. and Wenk, M.
“The provision of chocolate cookies had a significant effect on course evaluation. These findings question the validity of SETs and their use in making widespread decisions within a faculty.”
For more resources please take a look at UNC Charlotte’s ADVANCE resource list on the topic.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us at advance@clarkson.edu. If you’d like to keep up with information like this regularly, you can follow our Twitter account @ClarksonADVANCE. (Our PI team consists of Marc Christensen, Jen Ball, Laura Ettinger, William Jemison, & Stephanie Schuckers. Our Project Director is Sarah Treptow.)
Clarkson’s NSF ADVANCE grant is designed
1) to effect positive institutional change around reduction of implicit or unintentional bias associated with gender and intersectional issues of race, ethnicity, country of origin, sexual orientation, and disability,
2) to systematically and equitably support the development of inclusive leadership skills and the professional advancement of women STEM faculty, and
3) to implement sustainable, systematic changes across the University in support of these goals.
