Education Commons^™

Understanding Student Evaluations : A Black Faculty Perspective., Armon R. Perry, Sherri L. Wallace, Sharon E. Moore, Gwendolyn D. Perry-Burney

Sharon E. Moore

Student evaluations of faculty teaching are critical components to the evaluation of faculty performance. These evaluations are used to determine teaching effectiveness and they influence tenure and promotion decisions. Although they are designed as objective assessments of teaching performance, extraneous factors, including the instructors’ race, can affect the composition and educational atmosphere at colleges and universities. In this reflection, we briefly review some literature on the use and utility of student evaluations and present narratives from social work faculty in which students’ evaluation contained perceived racial bias.

Understanding Student Evaluations : A Black Faculty Perspective., Armon R. Perry, Sherri L. Wallace, Sharon E. Moore, Gwendolyn D. Perry-Burney

Sherri L. Wallace

Student evaluations of faculty teaching are critical components to the evaluation of faculty performance. These evaluations are used to determine teaching effectiveness and they influence tenure and promotion decisions. Although they are designed as objective assessments of teaching performance, extraneous factors, including the instructors’ race, can affect the composition and educational atmosphere at colleges and universities. In this reflection, we briefly review some literature on the use and utility of student evaluations and present narratives from social work faculty in which students’ evaluation contained perceived racial bias.

"Urban" Schooling And "Urban" Families: The Role Of Context And Place, Vivian L. Gadsden, Ezekiel J. Dixon-Román

Ezekiel J Dixon-Román

Black Men As College Athletes: The Real Win-Loss Record, Shaun R. Harper, Ph.D.

Shaun R. Harper, Ph.D.

Point of view published on the back cover of The Chronicle of Higher Education, January 24, 2014.

Did Teachers’ Race And Verbal Ability Matter In The 1960’S? Coleman Revisited, Ronald Ehrenberg, Dominic Brewer

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Our paper reanalyzes data from the classic 1966 study Equality of Educational Opportunity, or Coleman Report. It addresses whether teacher characteristics, including race and verbal ability, influenced "synthetic gain scores" of students (mean test scores of upper grade students in a school minus mean test scores of lower grade students in a school), in the context of an econometric model that allows for the possibility that teacher characteristics in a school are endogenously determined. We find that verbal aptitude scores of teachers influenced synthetic gain scores for both black and white students. Verbal aptitude mattered as much for black teachers …

Do Teachers’ Race, Gender, And Ethnicity Matter? Evidence From The National Education Longitudinal Study Of 1988, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Daniel D. Goldhaber, Dominic J. Brewer

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Using data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS), the authors find that the match between teachers' race, gender, and ethnicity and those of their students had little association with how much the students learned, but in several instances it seems to have been a significant determinant of teachers' subjective evaluations of their students. For example, test scores of white female students in mathematics and science did not increase more rapidly when the teacher was a white woman than when the teacher was a white man, but white female teachers evaluated their white female students more highly than …

Is “Race-Neutral” Really Race- Neutral?: Adverse Impact Towards Underrepresented Minorities In The Uc System., Jose Luis Santos, Nolan L. Cabrera, Kevin J. Fosnacht

Nolan L. Cabrera

Authors examine the proportion of undergraduate applications, admissions, and enrollments preceding, during, and after Proposition 209 while accounting for the relative growth in University of California eligibility for underrepresented minorities (URMs). They employed standard deviation analyses to measure dispersion of the URMs to non-URMs. Results suggest that "disparate impact" towards URMs persists, the magnitude is large, and affirmative action alone is insufficient to ensure an equitable admissions process.

Being The Change I Want To See In The World: Learning And Teaching From The Heart, Gloria Gordon Phd

Gloria Gordon PhD

The author draws on her professional practice as an educator/academic in a UK higher education institution to share her journey, as an African British woman, of becoming the change she wants to see in the world. She shares the process of the radical appropriation of her own unique and creative spiritual ‘I’ and the challenges she is presented with of identifying her particular path of meaning and purpose; of transcending the social construction of black and white identities; of definitive movement towards self realisation and spiritual freedom. The central thrust of the paper is the emphasis on how every individual …

Being True To What We Profess: Management Education And Inquiry - A Black British Perspective, Gloria Gordon Phd

Gloria Gordon PhD

The term ‘towards bicultural competence’ in the title of my doctoral thesis: Towards Bicultural Competence: Researching for Personal and Professional Transformations refers to my desire to become competent in negotiating the two cultures (British and African Caribbean) of my dual heritage. The lack of competence which is implied in the title has been a major problem in my personal and professional life and was therefore an important insight thrown up by my research efforts.