Yanan Fan leads study revealing gender and cultural bias held by uni students towards teachers
Published on the 14 Feb 2019
Associate Professor Yanan Fan has led a study which has revealed the existence of a gender and cultural bias towards teachers by university students.
The analysis, , is the largest Australian study of its kind, reviewing over half a million student experience surveys from UNSW Sydney students from 2010-2016 andinvolvingover 3,000 teachers and 2,000 courses across five faculties.
Itfound that students are more likely to rate male teachers higher than their female counterparts inthe areas ofScience and Business. Male English-speaking teachers in these areas had the highest probability ofreceiving the highest possible scores in the surveys.
However, in Arts and Social Sciences, there was no statistically significant bias against female teachers. The results suggest that where there is a larger proportion of female teachers, such as in Arts and Social Sciences, thereappears to be less bias.
The research also uncovered biases against teachers from non-English speaking backgrounds, with local students in Medicinemoreinclined toassignlower scores to female teachers from non-English speaking backgrounds, andmale English-speaking Engineering teachers 1.4 times more likelytoreceivehigher scores than teachers in all other categories.
“These results have enormous flow-on effects for society, beyond education, as over 40% of the Australian population now go to university, and graduates may carry these biases with them into the workforce,” said A/Prof Fan.“Reducing bias will have great benefits for society as university students represent a large proportion of future leaders in government and industry”.
UNSW Dean of Science Professor Emma Johnston, who co-authored the study, saidencouraging more women at the professorial level, in leadership positions and in membership of key committees, wouldhelp shrink these biases.
“We need to continue to support women at all levels of academia in STEM across Australia, in order to smash stereotypes that create the partiality that exists within our community”, she said.
Our recent PhD student Eve Slavich was another co-author of the research.
For more:
- Via PLOS One:
- authored by A/Prof Fan, Prof Johnston and Prof Merlin Crossley