Gender and University Teaching

A Negotiated Difference

By Anne Statham, Laurel Richardson, and Judith A. Cook

Subjects: Gender Studies
Series: SUNY series in Gender and Society
Paperback : 9780791407042, 202 pages, September 1991
Hardcover : 9780791407035, 202 pages, September 1991

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Table of contents

Tables and Figures

Acknowledgments

1. Theoretical Approaches to Understanding College Teaching
2. The Study
3. Basic Instructional Activities in Academia
4. Authority Management in the Classroom
5. Personalizations: Look Into My Life
6. Students' Reactions: Evaluating Men and Women Faculty
7. Conclusions and Implications for Teachers and Administrators

Appendices
A. The Hough-Duncan Observation Technique
B. Observer Effects Estimated with ANOVA
C. The Construction of Student Evaluation Scales: Competence and Likability
D. Student Questionnaire and Interview Guide

Notes

References

Indexes

Description

This book examines university teaching from several perspectives: What male and female professors do in the classroom, their perceptions and feelings about teaching, and how students respond. Data were gathered by observing professors in their classrooms, doing selected unstructured interviews, and soliciting evaluations/feedback from their students. This triangulation of data provides a richness of information and insight into the process of university teaching.

In addition to providing useful feedback to professors and administrators, this study integrates several social psychological approaches to gender with more recent feminist formulations. The findings support recently developed perspectives which argue that gender is a constantly created social phenomenon, not one cast securely in the concrete of social structure.

Anne Statham is Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of the Women's Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Parkside, and co-editor of The Worth of Women's Work: A Qualitative Synthesis also published by SUNY Press. Laurel Richardson is Professor of Sociology at The Ohio State University. Judith A. Cook is Director of the Thresholds Research Institute.

Reviews

"The topic is very significant in an era when higher education is under attack for not educating students properly. Rather than examining curriculum, as Bennett, Bloom, and the other conservatives have done, this book studies the behaviors and sentiments of the producers themselves — the college faculty. " — Catherine White Berheide, Skidmore College