V. Academic Roles

Academic faculty roles are traditionally categorized into areas of teaching, research, and service. Although the teaching identity is particularly salient, the reality is that academic jobs are rarely awarded solely on a candidate’s teaching ability, and tenure is generally not achieved simply through good teaching. Even in liberal arts colleges, new assistant professors are usually expected to establish and/or maintain a research program, making research central in the lives of full-time psychology faculty regardless of gender. In 1993, nearly 9 out of 10 full-time psychology faculty reported they were "engaged in research or other creative work" (NCES, 1993). At all academic ranks, the question of where and how teaching and research fit into a faculty member’s job description is complex. Most teaching-related tasks are immediate, and they can easily overshadow more long-term demands, such as writing a research article. But neglecting one’s research program can have long-term consequences. Individuals in part-time or contract positions are often in a particularly difficult situation. Their teaching demands are heavy, but unless they publish in a research area, the prospects of obtaining a tenure-track academic slot are remote.

In all of these roles, women have reached the highest levels of achievement and have been recognized for their excellence in teaching, their contributions to scientific knowledge in psychology, and for their vision and direction on behalf of their institution and their discipline (O’Connell & Russo, 1990).

Teaching plays a central role in the life of most faculty members, and it is a role most enjoy (Centra, 1993; McKeachie, 1987). As we have seen in Table 11, two out of three psychology faculty in 1993 reported teaching as their principal activity. The teaching role is particularly salient to those just beginning their academic careers and who are teaching (perhaps for the first time) in a new environment.

Demands of good teaching

The issue for many faculty is how to juggle the demands of teaching with other faculty roles. The requirements of good teaching are many, from class preparation, to exam writing and grading, to personal time with students. The time needed to adequately prepare a course is sometimes underappreciated, and this process can overwhelm new faculty. Decisions range from the mundane (e.g., choosing a textbook) to the philosophical (e.g., what type of a teacher am I?). The World Wide Web and classroom computers have opened new doors in instructional innovation, yet learning how and when to integrate them into the classroom takes time and energy (Halpern, 1998). As McKeachie (1987) noted, how faculty meet these challenges can set the tone for how they view teaching throughout their career. He further notes that new faculty may be unaware that institutions have their own norms and that deviating from those norms can have consequences (see also Caplan & Caplan, 1994). Assumptions about how to teach, which are often based on how faculty were themselves taught, may be inappropriate in one’s current setting. Women faculty may face additional demands that stem from mentoring and advising students. Students prefer instructors (Kaschak, 1978) and role models of the same gender (Bowman, Kite, Branscombe, & Williams, 1999; Scott, 1992) and if there are few women to meet these needs, women faculty can quickly become overloaded. This problem is especially acute in psychology, where the majority of undergraduate majors are women, but the majority of faculty members are men (APA Research Office, 1998).

The career benefits of good teaching often depend on the academic environment. Most academic jobs are in institutions where teaching matters; fewer than 10% of new PhDs are hired by research universities, where expectations clearly center on the scholarship of research (Gaff & Lambert, 1996). The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (1980, summarized in Boyer, 1990) found that just 10% of those teaching in research institutions reported teaching was "very important" to receiving tenure in their department. In contrast, 45% of those employed at liberal arts colleges rated teaching as "very important." Regardless of where they are employed, faculty may receive mixed messages about the rewards for good teaching. Good student ratings, for example, are personally validating and may be praised by other faculty and administrators. Faculty sometimes misinterpret these positive messages and conclude that good teaching will weigh heavily in promotion and tenure decisions. If this is not the norm at one’s college or university, the impact of such misunderstandings on a career can be devastating. Faculty must realistically assess the role that teaching and advising should play in their academic career and balance their time and efforts accordingly.

New faculty often leave graduate school ill prepared to make these assessments. A recent study of psychology graduate students in three institutions showed that students believed they were not adequately trained to meet the demands of college level teaching (Meyers, Reid, & Quina, 1998). PhD-granting institutions are more attuned to graduate student training needs than in the past, and many have established graduate student development programs designed to prepare future college teachers (Tice, 1997). Even so, the need for teaching-related mentorships clearly extends into the first job. Despite claims to the contrary (Selby & Calhoun, 1998), most people new to the academy need mentorship and training to help them develop their teaching skills (see Chrisler, 1998; Sandler, 1992).

Teaching assignments also vary by type of institution. Whereas faculty in research institutions might teach two courses per term, some of those courses being graduate courses related to their area of specialization, those in 4-year liberal arts colleges or community colleges may have as many as four preparations per term; some outside the person’s area of expertise altogether (e.g., a social psychologist might be asked to teach abnormal psychology). Course assignments are also, to some extent, associated with faculty gender. Women are more likely to teach undergraduates, whereas men are more likely to teach graduate students (see Chrisler, 1998). Women are concentrated in areas where teaching loads are heaviest and/or where decisions based on teaching ability are likely to have the greatest impact, such as in 2-year institutions or in part-time appointments.

Evaluations of teaching effectiveness

At the college level, teaching effectiveness is evaluated in three major ways: student ratings, peer review, and review of teaching portfolios. Student ratings are typically gathered by standardized ratings scales such as the Students’ Evaluation of Educational Quality (SEEQ; Marsh, 1982). Students report their perceptions of course-related characteristics, such as the professor’s knowledge, preparation, ability to hold their interest, and fairness. Often, students are asked to compare faculty with others professors. Peer evaluations are usually conducted by colleagues within a department who visit the classroom and offer feedback or criticism of the instructor’s teaching method. In some colleges and universities, members of a teaching development office make these assessments. Peer evaluations can take the form of a checklist (e.g., appropriate teaching behaviors were or were not observed), rating scales (e.g., questions similar to those on student rating scales), written feedback (e.g., a letter to the instructor outlining strengths and weaknesses), or verbal feedback. Teaching portfolios are developed by the instructor and usually include a narrative statement of the instructor’s philosophy of teaching. Instructors typically provide documents that illustrate this philosophy, such as syllabi or representative course assignments. This method differs from student and peer evaluation in that the instructor has complete control over the information provided in the portfolio.

Teaching evaluations serve two separate goals: improvement of teaching and personnel decision making (e.g., Centra, 1993; McKeachie, 1997). For the former goal, instructors gather information primarily for the purpose of teaching development. Hence, the collected information might be more or less structured, depending on the knowledge the professor hopes to gain. For the latter goal, information is typically formal, with evaluations focusing on global measures of teaching effectiveness. Student ratings and peer evaluations obtained for this purpose usually end up in a professor’s personnel file and will probably be part of his or her tenure review, salary review, or both. Faculty should consider carefully the amount and type of information they want to gather for each purpose and, in particular, make certain that information collected solely for teaching improvement purposes will not later end up in their personnel file. If, for example, instructors experiment with teaching methods, they will probably not want evaluations of these endeavors to become part of a personnel decision until the effectiveness of the method has been established. Midterm teaching evaluations can be utilized to correct problems with a course but should not be part of one’s personnel file (Centra, 1993; McKeachie, 1994).

Major teaching awards

Women have excelled as teachers of psychology, and this excellence has been recognized in national teaching awards. Nine of the 22 recipients of the American Psychological Foundation Distinguished Teaching Award have been women. Those recognized include Diane Halpern, recognized for the advancement of quality education through her work applying the principles of cognitive psychology and psychometrics to educating future thinkers; Patricia Keith-Spiegel, recognized for her contributions to undergraduate education and her contributions to ethical teaching practices; and Margaret Matlin for excellence in student-centered teaching and authoring five outstanding textbooks

The Society for the Teaching of Psychology (APA Division 2) annually recognizes outstanding teachers in four categories: 4 year, 2 year, high school, and early career; 40% of those awardees have been women. Examples include Virginia Nichols Quinn, recognized for innovative teaching at the community college level and in particular for her work with nontraditional college students; Amy Galloway, an early career winner honored for excellence in teaching and for innovative mentorship of fellow graduate student teachers; and Barbara Nodine, for her innovations in writing across the curriculum as a way to encourage thinking and reasoning.

Women have represented one third of all G. Stanley Hall speakers and, in the last decade, have represented 43% of those distinguished speakers. These women have represented an array of subdisciplines: Florence Denmark spoke on the psychology of women, Anne Anastasi presented work on testing, Elizabeth Capaldi lectured on motivation, and Larue Allen discussed diversity and teaching, to name a few.

Contributions to teaching and the curriculum

Women have led the way in advocating student-centered, participatory models of instruction and in encouraging students to take responsibility for their own learning (see Ginorio, 1998, for an example). Student participation is greater in the classrooms of women professors than in the classrooms of men professors, although the proportion of time women and men spend in structured classroom activities, such as lecturing or going over assignments, does not differ (Statham, Richardson, & Cook, 1991). Brooks (1982) found, for example, that women professors devoted nearly twice as much time to student participation than did men professors.

Women psychologists have also been leaders in efforts to transform the psychology’s curriculum and integrate information about gender and ethnicity in psychology courses (Madden & Hyde, 1998; Madden & Russo, 1997). APA’s Division 35 (Psychology of Women) has been successfully organizing a preconvention continuing education workshop since 1987. Having celebrated its 11th edition at the 1998 APA convention, the "Teaching Workshop: Psychology of Women and Gender" continues to be an important source of training for large numbers of psychologists. Special features of the workshop include presentations by faculty on teaching strategies, "mentoring" in small special interest groups led by senior scholars with experience in a number of specialty areas related to women and gender, and "networking."

Creating a feminist classroom goes beyond merely just "good teaching." Feminist pedagogy focuses both on how knowledge is created and how it is disseminated in the classroom. Principles that exemplify this process include making certain that all voices are encouraged, valued, and heard; being conscious of, and explicitly addressing, the issues of differential power, privilege, and oppression; acknowledging the power of the teaching role and seeking ways to empower students in the learning process; recognizing and accommodating multiple learning styles; and respecting the different contexts of students’ lives (see Kimmel & Worell, 1997).

Feminist psychologists have articulated principles for curriculum change in psychology programs (Chin & Russo, 1997) that have been used as a model for developing gender-sensitive curricula for the health professions. A concrete way that women have influenced the curriculum has been through accreditation guidelines for applied programs in clinical, counseling, and school psychology. Criteria in the 1986 accreditation guidelines (Appendix B) mandated curricula that helped students develop knowledge and skills related to diverse populations, including men and women, and specifically encouraged faculty recruitment of women, particularly senior women.

APA’s Committee on Women in Psychology (CWP) worked with the Committee on Accreditation (CoA) to increase the number of accreditation site visitors with demonstrated sensitivity to issues of diversity. This has included collecting and forwarding vitae of potential site visitors to APA’s accreditation office, encouraging CWP network members to participate, and requesting an accurate listing of women and ethnic minorities currently serving as site visitors. CWP also requested the CoA, when reviewing graduate programs, to consider four factors that may impede women’s ability to successfully complete graduate training: the lack of flexibility of the program’s structure, lack of representation of women across subareas, unequal distribution of financial aid allocations, and availability of curriculum issues relevant to women.

In 1996 a new set of accreditation criteria were released that included Domain D: Cultural and Individual Differences and Diversity in the Guidelines and Principles for Accreditation of Programs in Professional Psychology (seeAppendix B). In this area, programs were to be evaluated for their commitment to cultural and individual differences and diversity. The revised accreditation guidelines in general were less proscriptive than the 1986 criteria; and Domain D is a much weaker statement of support for training related to diversity or recruitment of women and minority faculty. In recognition of this, CWP asked to review copies of the materials used to help site visitors understand their responsibilities under Domain D. The committee also asked to review the self-study guidelines and site visitor report model documents and to receive copies of the nonconfidential minutes of CoA meetings. At this writing, the issues are unresolved, and the accreditation process continues to be of concern.

With regard to textbooks, progress has been uneven. In a review of the presentation of research methods in 27 introductory and 12 developmental psychology textbooks, Peterson and Kroner (1992) reported that such sections did not identify gender as an important factor in research, rarely cited the gender of participants in research reports and referred mostly to men when they did, and never examined the danger of generalizing from one gender to another. This lack of gender identification contradicts a clear requirement in APA’s Publication Manual, beginning with the 1974 edition, that researchers routinely report sex and age. In a line-by-line content analysis of the same 12 developmental texts, Conti and Kimmel (1993) counted the average length of text on gender differences, gender role development, and life events unique to women (e.g., menstruation, pregnancy, menopause, violence against women, and sexism). Only one topic of the 67 evaluated, gender role development, received more than a paragraph in any book, and most topics were mentioned with only a few lines. When two editors of feminist psychology journals rated each text’s section on gender role development on the extent to which it included feminist theory and data, only one text received a high rating from both reviewers.

Bronstein and Paludi (1988) found some improvement in inclusiveness of introductory psychology textbooks between 1981 and 1988. Ten of 13 had some discussion of gender roles (although only 4 mentioned other sociocultural factors in socialization). Denmark (1994) also found that the inclusion of women psychologists had improved since a previous study in 1983. Her review of 20 textbooks in introductory, social, developmental, and abnormal psychology found that most introductory, social, and developmental psychology books discussed a variety of topics related to gender, but abnormal psychology books discussed fewer such topics than the other books, and feminist approaches to therapy were virtually absent. She also found that discussions of women in all areas almost exclusively referred to research on White women. Other studies confirm that representation of ethnic minority women or other underrepresented groups continues to be abysmal (Bronstein & Paludi, 1988; Conti & Kimmel, 1993; Denmark, 1994; Peterson & Kroner, 1992; Reid, 1994; Whitten, 1993). With an eye toward improving this situation, APA’s Board of Educational Affairs’ Task Force on Diversity Issues (1998) at the precollege and undergraduate levels of education in psychology has developed an annotated bibliography that references scholarship on gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability for a number of psychology courses.

Obstacles for women as teachers

Women are more likely to be in institutions with heavy teaching loads and where teaching evaluations have the greatest impact. For these women, teaching is of primary importance, and gender biases related to the teaching setting and in teaching evaluations have greater potential for harm.

Gender biases in the classroom. The stereotypical college professor is a man who lectures to the class and, as an authority, imparts his knowledge to his students. Arguably, as was discussed earlier, these expectations create problems for women professors, who do not fit the stereotypes of an authority figure. First, women’s classrooms are less likely to conform to this stereotype. Crawford and MacLeod (1990) asked students to report their perceptions of what a class was like for them. They found that women professors reportedly elicited somewhat more active student participation. Men professors reportedly engaged in more negative and offensive behaviors. Statham et al. (1991) also reported gender differences in professor attitudes toward students. Women professors in their sample more often viewed students as collaborators and contributors to the learning process; men professors were more likely to focus on ways to present the material more effectively. These authors also found that women and men viewed their role as authority figures differently. At the lower ranks, women were more likely to believe they had to establish authority, whereas men were more likely to report knowing the students saw them as authorities before the class began.

Students report that women professors give them more time and personal attention than do male professors (Bennett, 1982; Crawford & MacLeod, 1990). Yet these same students hold women to a stricter standard of professionalism than they do men; women are negatively evaluated when they fail to meet student expectations about how often they should be available. Reflecting these biases, evidence suggests students treat women and men professors differently (Sandler, 1992). Women report a variety of negative experiences in the classroom, ranging from a perception that they are not taken seriously, to direct questioning of their credentials, to hostile and rude responses from students. Although male faculty also sometimes experience these behaviors, this rarely occurs to the same degree it does for women faculty. Brooks (1982) found that male students interrupted both male and female professors more often than female students did, but that male students were particularly likely to interrupt when the professor was a woman. When professors choose a less structured classroom style, women professors perceive more negative student reactions than do men professors (Statham et al., 1991). Similarly, women professors who are described as socializing outside of the classroom receive higher ratings than women not so described, but perceptions of male professors are unaffected by out-of-class socializing (Kierstead, D’Agostino, & Dill, 1988).

These findings highlight the potential for gender bias in the college classroom—women professors face a double bind that stems from expectations about both the faculty role and about women’s roles in the United States. Faculty members are expected to be directive, assertive, and knowledgeable; women are expected to be warm, nurturant, and supportive. Women faculty who are warm and nurturant fare better in students’ eyes than women who are not (see Bennett, 1982), but even these women walk a fine line. If they are too nurturant, they are not behaving as a professor should. If they are not nurturant enough, they are not behaving as a woman should (see Basow, 1998; Sandler, 1992). Straddling this line requires finesse. As Statham et al. (1991, p. 6) put it, "the mode of resolving these conflicts is crucial. Whether she resolves the conflict along gender-stereotypic or gender-innovative lines, such resolution might create secondary problems. For example, if she adopts a male-typed teaching style, she might be resented by her students; if she adopts a female-typed teaching style, she might be judged incompetent." In contrast, the male role and the professor role are not incongruent; because of this, men professors do not face this role conflict. Resolving this double bind is complicated because expectations for women professors differ by student gender. Winocur, Schoen, and Sirowatka (1989) found that male students devalued women who used an affiliative lecture style (greater eye contact, more smiling, more relaxed presentation). In contrast, female students devalued women who used an instrumental lecture style. These differences did not emerge for men lecturers. The most visible evidence of how well women resolve this conflict comes from evaluations of teaching effectiveness.

Specific gender bias in peer evaluations has received little or no attention despite the potential for such bias. Research has found a clear gender bias in peer-review of postdoctoral fellowship applications (Wenneras & Wold, 1997). As mentioned earlier, women and men have differing classroom styles, and people may be biased against styles that differ from their own. If women employ nontraditional teaching styles, and if the raters do not appreciate these styles, the result may be detrimental to their performance ratings. At a minimum, peer reviewers should be made aware of the potential for bias and should be educated about various pedagogical techniques and the philosophies behind them before evaluating others’ teaching. Students report the overall climate is better in smaller classes and in advanced classes and that interactions are most personalized in small classes with women instructors (Crawford & MacLeod, 1990). Large classes typically receive the lowest student ratings. Thus, even though there is some evidence that the gender difference in ratings diminishes as class size increases, women who are assigned primarily to teach lower level and/or large introductory classes may nonetheless receive lower teaching evaluations than their male counterparts simply because of their course assignments (Bernstein & Burke, 1995).

All individuals making personnel decisions based wholly or in part on student evaluations should be educated about the potential for bias in faculty evaluations. Indeed, McKeachie (1997) has argued that one of the major problems with formal teaching evaluations is that personnel committees misunderstand and misuse the available information. It is easy to rely on numerical indices to make judgments of quality teaching, but evaluators must carefully consider the source of those numbers and the factors that might affect them. Comparisons among faculty should be made cautiously; it is easy to overestimate the significance of rating differences (Centra, 1993). Differences of even 10% are unlikely to have any practical meaning. Summary judgments are better indicators than individual items, but relying solely on global scores may mask an instructor’s particular strengths. Similarly, comparisons between different classes are inappropriate because differences in content, teaching method, and other variables also affect teaching evaluations (McKeachie, 1997).

A meta-analysis of student evaluations showed no overall main effect for gender of teacher (Feldman, 1993). That is, when student ratings of women and men faculty are compared, results usually indicated similar evaluations. Drawing conclusions from such global analyses can be misleading, however. First, Feldman’s (1993) review included only 28 studies for which effect sizes could be computed. Of these studies, 17 showed women receive higher ratings, and 10 showed men receive higher ratings. Although no statistical test of effect size homogeneity is reported, it is highly unlikely that these effect sizes are homogeneous. Second, a global analysis overlooks the subtle ways that student ratings can be biased and do not take interaction effects into account. Perhaps because of the relatively small number of studies in his meta-analysis, Feldman does not report the statistical tests typically used to evaluate potential moderators. Yet, a number of factors might differentially affect male and female faculty members’ numerical student opinion ratings, including the types of questions asked, gender of the rater, and the faculty member’s discipline.

Evaluation biases likely reflect a combination of the professor’s classroom style and the students’ expectations. Women fare better than men on items reflecting warmth and concern for students (e.g., Basow, 1995; Bennett, 1982) but do less well on items tapping dynamism/enthusiasm (e.g., Marsh & Ware, 1982) or knowledge of subject matter (Bernstein & Burke, 1995; Feldman, 1993). Perception of faculty concern and availability may differ by ethnicity, however. One study found that minority men faculty received the most favorable evaluations on these measures, White women and men fell in between, and minority women received the least favorable evaluations (Bernstein & Burke, 1995).

Male students are especially likely to give women faculty low ratings, compared to men faculty (Basow, 1995; Basow & Silberg, 1987; Bernstein & Burke, 1995). In contrast, women students often evaluate women faculty particularly well (Basow, 1995). Rank is a factor, however. One study found that male students gave substantially lower ratings to female full professors compared to male full professors, while women students gave higher ratings to female full professors than to male full professors (Bernstein & Burke, 1995).

These complexities may vary by discipline, tenure status of the instructor, and expected grade. Overall, however, women’s ratings appear to be affected by extraneous variables more so than men’s (see Basow, 1998, for a review). The complexities surrounding student ratings, as noted earlier, suggest that caution should be used when interpreting them. Unfortunately, these sources of bias may not be obvious to those making personnel decisions based on student evaluations. Understanding these biases and their impact requires a sophisticated understanding of the social science literature, which decision-makers may lack.

Biases specifically related to instructor gender include the gender-typed characteristics of the instructor, the gender typing of the discipline, teacher rank, and the types of questions asked (see Basow, 1998, for a review). We previously described how professors’ style of presentation and students’ gender- associated expectations can result in negative ratings of women’s teaching. Discrimination is also more likely for individuals who teach in disciplines that are nontraditional for their gender. Evaluations of women chemistry instructors, for example, are more likely to be gender biased than are evaluations of women English instructors (Basow, 1995; Basow & Silberg, 1987; Kaschak, 1981). Women at the beginning stages of their career are probably more vulnerable to gender-based biases than are women of higher rank (see Basow, 1998; Kite & Balogh, 1997). This may be because more established women have greater control over their teaching load. Evidence suggests that instructor effectiveness varies by course type (e.g., Murray, Rushton, & Paunonen, 1990), so more established women simply may be able to teach in their niche. It may also be that women devote more time and energy to teaching than do men (Winocur et al., 1989) and learn to overcome teaching difficulties. A less optimistic view is that women who have negative classroom experiences drop out of teaching altogether. Answers to such questions deserve attention. Similarly, the extent to which teaching evaluations are influenced by instructor ethnicity has received little attention. With so few minorities teaching in the academy, overall patterns are difficult to detect, but efforts should be made to examine this question.