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[fiona]

Many Forumites should be interested in this, which is certainly true.

http://chronicle.com/article/Chief-Targets-of-Student/65396/?sid=pm&utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en

The Fiona

[der_gadfly]

I have witnessed this on several occasions. Our youngish, female faculty often complained about boorish behavior, and seemed more likely to react strongly - up to and including expulsion - for offenses that the oldish, male faculty often took more in stride. Not to say that it is across gender lines, but I witnessed far fewer incidents withthe youngish, male faculty than with their female counterparts.

I suspect that there is more to the dynamic than meets the eye.....

[lolar2]

I want to know who was quoted as saying "There has actually been a decrease in uncivil behavior in that I grow older and more frightening." That's who I want to be when I grow up.

[fiona]

I want to know who was quoted as saying "There has actually been a decrease in uncivil behavior in that I grow older and more frightening." That's who I want to be when I grow up.

I didn't say it, but I could have. It's true.

The Fiona, wishing I'd been asked

[kedves]

This is interesting.  A study of African-American faculty experiences found that both male and female professors were regularly challenged by students in the classroom (a pattern they tended to downplay), male professors on grounds of their intellectual qualifications and female professors in terms of their authority--control of the classroom (Harlow 2003, pdf of article here).

I had been mildly challenged in the classroom before I worked at my current place, but never treated abusively.  When I was, it required a mental shift, but I had experiences and skills to call on.  Many very nice people don't have the, um, resources that I have as a not-nice person.   I would love to participate in mini-workshops or coaching.  It's not a good thing that we have to be ready for it, but being ready for it decreases its incidence, in my experience.  The downside to my style is that my really nasty students tend not to react to my face, which I would prefer to the alternatives.

[willismg]

A comeback I once "heard" a professor use with an unruly student:  "Not only are you not the smartest person in the room, you're not even the smartest person in this conversation."

Sometimes, being an older gentleman has its perks.

[merce]

I think this ties in well with the study/ies that show female, and young female faculty in particular, receive worse evals than their male counterparts. There have been many instances where one of my female colleagues recounts an event from her class or quotes an email and asks, "would they have done or said this if I'd been a man?"

It's really frustrating.

In my own experience, I didn't notice or think about the possible difference in behavior until I became a professor. I never felt or heard about differences of this kind during my many years as a TA.  I wonder if that is common to others or just due to my particular experiences.

[kedves]

I think we should separate classroom challenges and confrontation, and the stress and fatigue that these cause unequally to faculty members by gender, from teaching evaluations.  There have been some studies finding that male instructors are rated more highly, but I think these are mainly from the 1970s and did not look at instructor-student gender interaction. I could be wrong because I am only a dabbler in this vast research literature.  The studies I am aware of that consider the gender of instructor and student have tended to find that students rate same-gender instructors slightly higher; male students rate male instructors higher than female instructors, and the same for female students with female instructors (Basow 2000, S.Smith et al. 2007).  Other studies have found no difference (Freeman 1994).

Younger instructors are rated more highly than older ones (Arbuckle & Williams 2003, Davidovitch 2006--that was in Israel, don't know how similar, where youth was strongest predictor of high score).  Similar-age predicts better ratings than much younger or older than students (Sprinkle 2008).

Gender effects, where found, have tended to be small in comparison to other factors.  Student variables such as student interest are very important; instructor and course variables such as preparation, clarity, organization, pacing, enthusiasm, warmth and caring, flexibility, and friendliness tend to be much more important to ratings than other variables, and perceived as more important by students than by instructors (Nuhfer 2003). 

[bluezebracat]

A friend of mine said that she got higher evals when she actively tried to be mean.  She speculated that the students were reading mean=authority.  Any thoughts?

[lerasmus]

From the article:

Given the universal nature of some of the student behaviors examined, such as dozing off in class, it may be fair to ask whether some faculty members were just more inclined than others to have let student incivility roll off of them and not recall it or see it as worth reporting.

I'm not overly impressed by the study and what was actually unearthed. If you ask some of the full professors in my department about their perceptions of their students, they'll assert that students enjoy their classes and are attentive - but sitting in their classes, I see behavior that is as bad or worse as in my own lecture classes that they are simply oblivious (or impervious) to. It would be more useful to have studies that focused on direct confrontations between students and faculty, and one that didn't depend on "self-perception" on the part of the faculty.

[embitteredhistorian]

I absolutely believe this. The students' assumption is probably that young female professors are the least empowered at the university, so they don't require as much respect as other demographics. I suppose we would need to target this assumption and eradicate it.

[systeme_d_]

Let me be clear about the fact that I do not dispute that young female professors often encounter great disrespect in the classroom.  The "young and female" demographic probably faces the most challenges overall.

But anecdotally, the worst cases of disrespect I've ever heard about at my own university were encountered by gay male professors.

[mathspice]

A comeback I once "heard" a professor use with an unruly student:  "Not only are you not the smartest person in the room, you're not even the smartest person in this conversation."

Sometimes, being an older gentleman has its perks.

Nice! I believe this article, too.

[merce]

Again, nothing but anecdotal "evidence" and feelings (blech), but I wonder if embitteredhistorian isn't on to something. 

This year I've heard from other young, female professors that students wrote formal emails complaining to the chair about the professor.  When comparing these emails I and a few others began to see common language.  I mean word for word expressions I would never have thought to use, e.g., "inappropriate allocation of instructional time" or that the professor is not doing something to "bring students to a level of excellence/success."  It's creepy how eerily similar the statements are. 

Of course, perhaps we need to just nip this in the bud ourselves. I decided to write to students who had bad attitudes (towards me or towards other students or the material or discipline) and asked them to come see me about it.  They all became butter and docile lambs.  I'm not sure what the evals will show (if I can even determine which ones were written by these particular students) but the class became more comfortable for me and the rest of the students.  I hope it also will have taught them to think twice before speaking out of turn in their next classes.

... The students' assumption is probably that young female professors are the least empowered at the university, so they don't require as much respect as other demographics. ...

[kaysixteen]

Like it or not, the perception, however real it may be, on the part of white male students, that nonwhite/ nonmale faculty members are likely to be sub-qualified affirmative action hires has to have some weight here, especially when considering how young undergrads generally are.