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Article
Mitigating gender bias in student evaluations of teaching
PLoS ONE
  • David A. M. Peterson, Iowa State University
  • Lori A. Biederman, Iowa State University
  • David Andersen, Iowa State University
  • Tessa M. Ditonto, Iowa State University
  • Kevin J. Roe, Iowa State University
Document Type
Article
Publication Version
Published Version
Publication Date
5-15-2019
DOI
10.7910/DVN/AB4ZAV
Abstract

Student evaluations of teaching are widely believed to contain gender bias. In this study, we conduct a randomized experiment with the student evaluations of teaching in four classes with large enrollments, two taught by male instructors and two taught by female instructors. In each of the courses, students were randomly assigned to either receive the standard evaluation instrument or the same instrument with language intended to reduce gender bias. Students in the anti-bias language condition had significantly higher rankings of female instructors than students in the standard treatment. There were no differences between treatment groups for male instructors. These results indicate that a relatively simple intervention in language can potentially mitigate gender bias in student evaluation of teaching.

Comments

This article is published as Peterson, David A.M., Lori A. Biederman, David Andersen, Tessa M. Ditonto, and Kevin Roe. "Mitigating gender bias in student evaluations of teaching." PLoS One 14, no. 5 (2019): e0216241. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0216241. Posted with permission.

Creative Commons License
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International
Copyright Owner
Peterson et al.
Language
en
File Format
application/pdf
Citation Information
David A. M. Peterson, Lori A. Biederman, David Andersen, Tessa M. Ditonto, et al.. "Mitigating gender bias in student evaluations of teaching" PLoS ONE Vol. 14 Iss. 5 (2019) p. e0216241
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/kevin_roe/24/