Determinants of perceived teaching quality: The role of divergent interpretations of expectations

The evaluation of teaching effectiveness has received considerable academic attention. Yet, it remains controversial whether student evaluations of teaching reflect teaching quality or whether these ratings are dominated by factors unrelated to teaching effectiveness. Recently, an additional concern has been raised, namely that they are plagued by systemic biases such as gender discrimination. Here, we address both of these questions with high statistical power, by analyzing a comprehensive set of data from RateMyProfessors.com. We find that gender differences in perceived quality are minute, and that the overall ratings can be well predicted by specific instructor attributes. We conclude that student derived evaluations of teaching are largely unbiased and reflect instructor qualities. We account for our findings by positing the divergent interpretations of expectations (DIE) model.