How Student Perceptions of Teaching Are Biased Against Women and Ethnic Minority Professors
摘要
In this chapter we describe how based on socialization factors, university students are subject to systemic biases of gender and ethnicity when judging their professors’ fairness behaviors. We propose and empirically support Inman, Radhakrishnan and Liggett’s (2021) framework that explains how students’ stereotyped expectations of their women and ethnic minority women professors, along with their prejudicial attitudes toward women in non-traditional roles as professors, biases their perceptions of them. Using data collected from an internationally, and locally diverse, student body of undergraduates studying economics and management at a large North American metropolitan university, we demonstrate how student expectations of their ideal professors to be challenging and caring conflict with those they have of their women professors to be caring, and of their Asian professors to be submissive, doubling jeopardizing their perceptions of Asian women professors’ fairness behaviors. The bias is particularly pronounced for students who score higher on modern sexism and how they judge ethnic minority women professors. We conclude with steps academic institutions can take to mitigate the bias of prejudicial attitudes within their student bodies as well as in attempts to change their prototypes of the ideal professor by increasing the representation of women and ethnic minority women professors in their institutions.