Part-time faculty status and student evaluation of teaching: An analysis of criminal justice classes |
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| Authors: | Steven Stack |
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| Institution: | Wayne State University , Michigan, USA |
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| Abstract: | Although part-time (p/t) faculties constitute a growing proportion of college instructors, there is little work on their level of teaching effectiveness relative to full-time (f/t) faculty. Previous work on a key indicator of perceived teaching effectiveness, student evaluation of teaching (SET), and faculty status (p/t/ vs f/t) is marked by a series of shortcomings including lack of a systematic theoretical framework and lack of multivariate statistical analysis techniques to check for possible spuriousness. The present study corrects for these shortcomings. Data consist of SETs from 175 sections of criminal justice classes taught at a Midwestern urban university. Controls are introduced for variables drawn from the literature and include ascribed characteristics of the professor, grade distribution, and structural features of the course (e.g., level, size). The results of a multivariate regression analysis indicate that even after controlling for the other predictors of SETs, p/t faculty receive significantly higher student evaluation scores than f/t faculty. Further, faculty status was the most important predictor of SETs. The results present the first systematic evidence on faculty status and SETs. |
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