Feminist research often explores operative biases, oppressive practices, and/or the status of women and people of color in postsecondary institutions, yet it is also often devalued or even ignored by administrative bodies, and this can be attributed to the opinions of some uninformed researchers hailed as experts in their respective fields. For example there is a plethora of research on student evaluations of teaching, which dates back as far as 1927 (Marsh 257). Much of it explores possible student biases that can affect how students rate teachers (for example, see Basow, 1998, Basow and Silberg, 1987; Bennett, 1982; Lombardo and Tocci, 1979; Wilson and Doyle, 1976; Younger, Warrington, and Williams, 1999 to name just a handful). Such studies have shown that biases always exist for everyone, and thus affect how people view their worlds, including teaching in postsecondary institutions. However, many highly respected education researchers still hold that the research shows no significant evidence of any bias factors affecting teaching evaluations (see Ory, 2001, Howard, Conway, & Maxwell, 1985). This is a high-stakes discrepancy in research and its interpretation because evaluation of teaching affects the postsecondary tenure and promotion process. The research and its contradictions call for feminist action. Feminist researchers can (and must) perform feminisms from within such potentially oppressive conversations, and “do feminism” as a response to the problematic hegemonic assumptions under which our systems of higher education operate. The most effective feminist performances negotiate meanings of feminism while they challenge patriarchal ideas of objectivity.

Though students’ voices are an important resource in improving quality in teaching and learning, they have another side as well. When student evaluations of teaching are viewed through a feminist theoretical frame, a potential danger becomes evident: they can be tools of oppression that continue to reinforce the social hierarchy that privileges the dominant culture. In fact it must be established for some in higher education, such as Ory, and Howard, Conway and Maxwell (above), that women are in fact a subjugated class of people, which most feminists already know. This inequity is often a motivating factor in our activism and research. According to feminist theorists, Ann E. Cudd and Leslie E. Jones women “lack access to education, […] are paid less than their male counterparts, […] are more often harassed and intimidated in work, […] and are more often responsible for childcare and housework” (73). These inequities lead Cudd and Jones to conclude that women are either, “inferior to men” or are “systematically oppressed by society” (73). Apparently the imbalance to which Cudd and Jones refer between the status of men and women in society at large, or in postsecondary institutions, is not obvious to many experts in the field of education, and thus feminism has much work yet to do.

Findings of studies of student evaluations of teaching conducted within specific teaching and learning situations are naturally in conflict with other findings that have come forth from within different situations. These dissimilar results are caused by different and often conflicting methodological, disciplinary, and/or political foundations, which have acted as motivating factors, or which shape teacher and student identities. Some studies that have suggested little or no biases affect evaluations succinctly produce large numbers that can easily quantify teaching, but in so doing also simplify the classroom into numbers with very few contextual explorations. On the other hand, studies that look specifically at multiple dimensions of the classroom, often find several bias factors that not only affect the evaluation process, but that also affect students’ attitudes toward teaching and learning in general, which are always open to negotiation if teachers are willing to collaborate with students to help them shape their experiences.

Some specific examples of such multidimensional feminist approaches include research by Susan Basow, and Michael Younger, Molly Warrington, and Jacquetta Williams. Basow’s bias study, “Student Evaluations of College Professors: When Gender Matters,” which is often cited (for example, see Basow & Silberg, 1987; Basow & Distenfeld, 1985; Bernstein & Burke, 1995; Cashin, 1988; Centra, 2000; Clayson & Haley, 1990; Hobson & Talbot, 2001; Leuck, Endres, & Caplan, 1992; Santhanam & Hicks, 2002) gathered extensive quantitative data about the positions of both males and female teachers and some data about students at her institution, and then compiled data from a large number of student evaluations. Her study found that female teachers were at a disadvantage in terms of status and position at her institution, and the ratings students gave them favored male teachers in many cases, thus making tenure and promotion even more challenging for the already disadvantaged female teachers. The reason that some such as Ory have misunderstand Basow’s findings and said that bias studies such as this one show only slight to no significant differences between ratings of males and female teachers, is that when a female teacher only has one factor working against her, such as professional status, the significance is often slight. But when factors are added together, such as being female, inexperienced, and Hispanic, the impact becomes highly significant. The bias study by Younger et al. focused on high school students, but offered much insight into the impact of gender on teaching evaluations by gathering data from focus groups and interviews. Its major finding, which confirmed Basow’s work, was that male students’ perceptions differed from perceptions of other evaluators, but the other evaluators, including female teachers, students, and peers, and male teachers and peers, all agreed on many points about male behavior, which is an important implication to higher education, since it would be only a few years before many of these same students would be rating college teachers.

Basow continued to review research on student evaluations recognizing the multiple factors that affect how teachers are rated by students, and called for more research in her 1998 article, “Student Evaluations: The Role of Gender Bias and Teaching Styles,” which provides a comprehensive overview of studies into variables of diversity that affect outcomes of student evaluations. In “Student Evaluations […],” Basow talks about how difficult gender bias is to see because it is subtle and only evident in certain situations ("Student Evaluations: The Role " 137). Building on her earlier studies, she reiterates her warning about how the evaluations can become increasingly worse as the number of variables that can bias evaluations begin to stack up ("Student Evaluations: The Role" 150).

Research shows, according to Basow, that students’ gender-stereotyped expectations of teachers are highly problematic in that they present a double bind for female teachers Female teachers must fulfill the feminine role expectations of spending time with students, engage in student-teacher interactions, make fewer demands, and give more personal support, which is not expected of male teachers. However, Basow asserts, women also have to fulfill masculine role expectations such as being highly-structured, experienced, and professional, like their male counterparts, in order to receive ratings equivalent to male teachers ("Student Evaluations: The Role" 140). Thus males are doing less work and getting similar credit to females.

Basow brings to light many important insights in terms of gendered behaviors of teachers, which should be part of any program that attempts to prepare teachers in higher learning institutions where student evaluations are administered. She also calls for more research into other areas of diversity, such as multiple genders, race, and class, into which there is surprisingly little research. These variables, however, are also important in terms of students, which Magda Lewis explores in “The Backlash Factor: Women, Intellectual Labour and Student Evaluation of Courses and Teaching.” Lewis notes how the academy has been challenged in recent years by those who have been excluded, such as “women, racial and ethnic minorities, the socially and economically marginal, and those who would challenge the dominant sexual, and mental and manual mores” to be more inclusive of diverse students and teachers/researchers than in former years, a challenge that has not been overcome (62). In fact, it has created much tension over what counts as knowledge, and what is rewarded in the system of promotion and tenure. Lewis claims that rather than accurately measuring the efficacy of teaching, student evaluations actually reinforce the status quo, keeping the acceptable ideologies (i.e. the patriarchal hegemony) in place (62).

Lewis confronts the notions of systemic oppression that many in less-privileged positions experience and evaluates the many ways it can surface within a classroom situation. She says that it “is not easy to document systemic discrimination precisely because the ‘system’ absorbs the conceptual frameworks by which its own hegemony might be uncovered” (64). Lewis problematizes the student evaluation process by reviewing her own experience with evaluations noting the times when she has received ratings that are extremely varied with one class ranging from being the “very best thing they ever encountered” to the “worst course ever taken” (65). If department chairs and administrators of the promotion and tenure process were looking at this particular evaluation, the scores and comments could cause much confusion without their looking deeply into the “social, racial, cultural, gender, ideological, political and religious biases, experiences and insights students might bring to the enterprise” (68), and similar insights of teachers as well. Conflicts are not only likely to emerge when students are being confronted with multiple views that oppose their own, but higher learning should require such confliction. Without it, it is questionable if students are learning new and diverse bodies of knowledge. Rather the “traditional” (hegemonic) bodies of knowledge and the status quo, as Lewis points out above, are just being reified.

As long as department chairs and promotion and tenure committees do not take into account the multiple dimensions of identity of each person and individual teaching situation such as both faculty and student genders (multiple), gendered behaviors, race, ethnicity, age, historical, religious, or ideological backgrounds, and social or economic class, the scores of student evaluations not only fail to fully reflect positive efficacy of teaching, but they may in fact reinforce ineffective teaching or teaching that does not challenge students to think and question belief systems other than their own. Also of importance to consider are factors of the teacher such as career status and discipline, and of the actual teaching situation such as required or elective course, grade expected, and gendered or stereotypical teaching styles.

We feminists must perform our feminisms in the research we conduct; we must “do feminism” in research and teaching so that colleges and universities can comprise greater diverse student and faculty populations, but with fewer inequities. Diversity needs to be more carefully defined in ways that include multiple grounds of identity, which examine the multiple dimensions of the classroom situation and the teaching and learning that takes place there. Furthermore, diversity needs to be foundational rather than adjunct to any exploration or evaluation of a teacher’s performance as an educator. If the research that administrations, chairs, teachers, or students continue to rely upon only superficially looks at a scant few variables of teaching and learning they will never see the rich dimensions that make up the classroom where all students and teachers should be able to thrive and learn. Worse still is the unfortunate fact that must be changed: that administrators and educators are often given a limited view of the classroom by researchers such as Ory, or Howard, Conway, and Maxwell, whose studies offer large numbers with a narrow focus that indicate that student evaluations are objective accounts of teaching. If these kinds of studies continue to be the mainstream ones that are most heard, oppression will continue and the hegemony will be reinforced and hidden. Feminism research must go forward to reveal the problems with research that asserts the notion that any facet of our world is objective.

Contradictions that we uncover through feminist research open up spaces for us to perform our feminisms, to “do feminism” by creating a greater sense of community for all. For example, the present research discovered a conflict between researchers of student evaluations of teaching. This discovery suggests that most higher learning institutes are allowing for the reinforcement of traditional ideological positions and furthering the interests of the status quo, rather than supporting the teaching and fostering the learning of people from multiple genders, races, ethnicities, social and economic, religious, political, and ideological backgrounds, age groups, and disciplines. The reason that many studies of student evaluations of teaching so far have produced conflicting results is that too few of them account for multiple dimensions of teaching and learning. Student evaluations of teaching could be the starting place of much more learning for administration, teachers, and students, if the evaluations are looked at in light of the complexity of the classroom and the people who teach and learn there. The evaluations could also provide a beginning for us all to better understand the depth of meaning entailed by the notion of diversity. This is just one contradiction among many in the academy, one area in particular where feminism can perform.