Research Spotlight: How Student Feedback Can Reproduce Gendered Expectations

In “A Troubleshoot Test of Student Evaluations of Teaching: Role Congruity, Gendered Language, and Educational (In)Equalities,” Michele A. Parker and Shawn S. Savage examine the subtle patterns inside narrative student evaluations of teaching for Black faculty at a historically and predominantly white institution. Their study asks readers to look beyond whether evaluations are positive or negative and to consider how excellence itself is described. We spoke with one of the authors, Dr. Shawn S. Savage of the University of North Carolina Wilmington, to learn more about how gendered language in student evaluations can reproduce inequities in faculty assessment.

Student evaluations of teaching are often treated as routine feedback, but they can carry serious consequences. In many colleges and universities, they inform decisions about teaching improvement, promotion, tenure, retention, and recognition. Parker and Savage show why the wording of student comments deserves close attention, especially when those comments are read as evidence of teaching effectiveness. The study draws on role congruity theory to examine how social expectations about gender shape perceptions of authority, care, expertise, and instructional excellence in educational settings.

The article focuses on Black faculty because aggregated analyses of faculty of color can obscure the distinct pressures Black instructors face in academic settings. By examining comments for Black women and Black men instructors in the same institutional context, the study makes visible how gendered expectations can shape the language of praise, critique, and legitimacy.

For faculty developers, department chairs, institutional leaders, and researchers, this matters because unequal patterns can appear even when comments seem positive. Savage reflected on the broader significance of the study: “One key implication is that student evaluations tell us more than whether students liked a course or an instructor—they also reveal the expectations students carry into the classroom. If institutions focus only on whether comments sound positive or negative, they can miss how instructional excellence is being defined and recognized through gendered lenses. Institutions need to read even their positive evaluations with a critical eye, asking what expectations are at work—for example, whether they reflect thoughtful pedagogy or problematic gendered social norms—and how they shape which forms of excellence are seen and rewarded.”

The article identifies three major contributions for understanding student evaluations of teaching as language, not only as scores. Its findings are careful rather than sweeping, because the authors focus on one institutional context and present student comments through composite and paraphrased representations to protect confidentiality.

Women instructors were often framed through care, mentorship, approachability, compassion, organization, and relational support. The evidence appears in the article’s analysis of paraphrased student comments, where praise for women instructors frequently became legible through communal traits and through rigor that was softened by flexibility or scaffolding.

Men instructors were often framed through authority, rigor, intellectual challenge, innovation, charisma, leadership, and depth of knowledge. The evidence appears in the article’s analysis of comments that treated challenge and intellectual pressure as expected strengths, while care and compassion operated as additional positive qualities rather than required forms of labor.

Across the comparison, both women and men instructors were recognized as effective, but effectiveness was constructed differently. The article’s comparative table shows that similar practices could be interpreted through different gendered frames, with women granted narrower pathways to recognition and men granted broader evaluative latitude.

These findings raise an important question about what institutions may miss when they focus only on averages or overall positivity. Savage reflected on the finding he most wants readers to remember: “One finding that stood out in our analysis was how consistently different pathways to instructional excellence showed up in the evaluations. The same teaching strengths could be read through different gendered frames. For instance, similar forms of structure and high standards might be praised as ‘rigorous’ for some instructors but described as ‘demanding’ or ‘inflexible’ for others. That pattern suggests that student evaluations reflect not only how students see teaching but also the expectations they bring to their assessments of instructors. Those expectations aren’t always realistic, attainable, or applied in the same way, and not meeting them doesn’t automatically mean someone is an ineffective instructor.”

Parker and Savage analyzed open-ended comments from IDEA student evaluations of teaching across 22 courses from one academic year. The data came from four Black faculty members in the same department at a historically and predominantly white institution in the Southeastern United States. The study used a practitioner research design and a critical, interpretivist approach that placed the authors’ positionality and reflexive dialogue at the center of the inquiry.

The analysis involved multiple rounds of qualitative interpretation. The research team began with individual coding, then reviewed and refined codes in gender-based pairs, then reconvened as a full team to finalize themes and insights. The data were complex because anonymous student comments were brief, high stakes, shaped by institutional context, and intertwined with racialized and gendered perceptions. The authors paraphrased student comments rather than using direct quotations, consistent with their IRB requirements.

Evidano appears in the article as part of the authors’ AI-assisted analytic process. After initial human coding and team review, the researchers used Evidano to clarify, expand, and refine their final analytic considerations regarding gender perceptions in the student evaluation comments.

The article is careful about the role of AI in the workflow. Evidano helped the authors identify comparative distinctions that warranted further examination during subsequent rounds of collaborative analysis, and the researchers then revisited and confirmed those insights through collaborative scholarly expertise. As the authors put it, these AI-assisted affordances operated “not as substitutes, but as a complement to our human intelligence analyses.”

That framing is especially important for researchers exploring AI-assisted qualitative analysis. Savage also noted how AI tools can support careful research workflows when used responsibly: “Evidano was most helpful because it encouraged Dr. Parker and me to revisit the data from a different analytic vantage point. It didn’t replace our interpretation; it expanded the kinds of questions we asked. For qualitative researchers, AI is most valuable when it prompts critical reflection and deeper inquiry, rather than when it is treated as a substitute for scholarly judgment.”

For researchers, the article demonstrates the value of reading evaluation comments as social texts. A word like caring, rigorous, approachable, challenging, or charismatic may look straightforward on its own. Across a body of comments, however, such language can reveal the expectations through which students interpret teaching and authority.

For institutions, the study cautions against treating student evaluations as neutral measures of quality. A more equitable approach would use multiple forms of evidence, train reviewers to recognize patterned language, and help students provide concrete feedback about teaching rather than broad judgments about personality or fit. Savage offered this takeaway for readers: “I’d like to see institutions become much more intentional about how evaluation comments are interpreted in review processes. Student evaluations can offer useful insights, but they should be read alongside other forms of evidence—such as peer observations, supervisor feedback, and student work—with the understanding that none of these sources or the people interpreting them are neutral. All of these perspectives are shaped by expectations, and those expectations can create inequities and inequalities in how teaching is judged, even when everyone is trying to be fair. That matters because these judgments often carry real consequences for hiring, reappointment, tenure, promotion, and recognition. Teaching is complex, and no single instrument, or single perspective, can do justice to that complexity.”

The broader lesson is not that student feedback should be dismissed. It is that feedback should be interpreted with care, context, and humility. By showing how praise itself can be patterned by gendered and cisnormative expectations, Parker and Savage invite higher education to rethink how teaching is seen, valued, and rewarded.