The roles of gender bias have tended to be overlooked in research into what students perceive as excellence in teaching. This chapter describes an investigation of student-submitted nominations for an excellence award at a mid-sized university in England to explore any gendered patterns in the nominations’ thematic content. It was found that, whereas female students described their excellent male and female teachers in similar ways, male student descriptions of their excellent female teachers tended to emphasise stereotypically feminine competencies relative to their descriptions of excellent male teachers. As feminine competencies tend to be perceived as relatively less important in UK higher education, the association of female teachers with feminine competencies can disadvantage women in formal recognition processes. On an individual level, it is important to recognise that sociocultural biases and expectations can influence evaluations of teaching quality. With regard to educational development, moving towards a model of teaching expertise as opposed to teaching excellence would help shift evaluative foci on to practices that are within an individual’s control.
Kwok, Kathryna Potter, Jackie
OCSLD - Oxford Centre for Staff Learning and DevelopmentSchool of Education
Year of publication: 2022Date of RADAR deposit: 2022-10-19
All rights reserved. "This is an accepted manuscript of a book chapter published by Routledge in Developing Expertise for Teaching in Higher Education on 22 March 2022, available online: https://www.routledge.com/Developing-Expertise-for-Teaching-in-Higher-Education-Practical-Ideas-for/King/p/book/9781032057002."