Evaluating Students' Evaluations of Professors

By Michela Braga, M. Paccagnella, M. Pellizzari. Social Science Research Network, 2014

331 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper contrasts measures of teacher effectiveness with the students’ evaluations for the same teachers using administrative data from Bocconi University. The effectiveness measures are estimated by comparing the performance in follow-on coursework of students who are randomly assigned to teachers. We find that teacher quality matters substantially and that our measure of effectiveness is negatively correlated with the students’ evaluations of professors. A simple theory rationalizes this result under the assumption that students evaluate professors based on their realized utility, an assumption that is supported by additional evidence that the evaluations respond to meteorological conditions.

Subfields: Education

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e03ca624f9c6c5fa8902ba2c44137a9de44d0d7c

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Education

Citations in the corpus

Measuring teaching quality in higher education: assessing selection bias in course evaluations (2017, background): “For instance, Braga et al. (2014), Carrell and West (2010), and Weinberg et al. (2009) find that student evaluations are not correlated to learning, as measured by performance in follow-up courses.”
The L2 motivational self system: A meta-analysis (2018, result): “For example, results by Braga et al. (2014) show that “teachers who are more effective in promoting future performance receive worse evaluations from their students” (p.”
Student Evaluations of Teaching Encourages Poor Teaching and Contributes to Grade Inflation: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis (2020, methodology): “However, when performance in subsequent—more advanced—courses was used as criterion, course ratings were negatively correlated in five of the studies (Braga et al., 2014; Carrell & West, 2010; Johnson, 2003; Keng, 2018; Yunker & Yunker, 2003).4 In the Weinberg et al. (2009) study, student…”
An Evaluation of Course Evaluations (2014, background): “This experiment has been done at the U.S. Air Force Academy [26] and Bocconi University in Milan, Italy [27].”
Reconceptualizing the Sources of Teaching Self-Efficacy: a Critical Review of Emerging Literature (2016, neutral): “Student feedback in the form of end-of-course evaluations might be less influential to some instructors because it has been shown to be a poor indicator of instructional quality (Braga et al. 2014; Carrell and West 2010).”
Student evaluations of teaching are an inadequate assessment tool for evaluating faculty performance (2017, background): “…the current author is aware that convincingly argues for the position that SET scores are measures of instructor teaching competence (Beecham, 2009; Braga et al., 2014; Hoefer et al., 2012; Spooren et al., 2013; Stark & Freishtat, 2014; Wright, 2006; Yunker & Yunker, 2003), and no specific…”
Gender Bias in Teaching Evaluations (2017, neutral): “In Carrell and West (2010) and Braga et al. (2014), by contrast, teaching evaluations are not positively related to teacher value added.”
Working with Machines: The Impact of Algorithmic and Data-Driven Management on Human Workers (2015, result): “Consistent with previous research on letter-grading systems or numeric evaluation of teaching skills [4], many random factors that are out of drivers’ control influence the way passengers rate drivers.”
Student Evaluations of Teaching (Mostly) Do Not Measure Teaching Effectiveness (2016, neutral): “Randomized experiments [2,3] have shown that students”
Gender, ethnicity and teaching evaluations: Evidence from mixed teaching teams (2016, background): “2 Braga et al. (2014) show that students’ evaluations of teachers are negatively correlated with a more objective”