Article Analysis #1

Carefully read "The Impact of Physical Attractiveness, Gender, and Teaching Philosophy on Teacher Evaluations" from the Journal of Education Research by Buck and Tiene. Then, provide succinct answers to the following questions.

1. What was/were the research questions(s)?

What impact does a teacher's attractiveness, gender, and teaching philosophy have on a subject's evaluation of them?

2. Identify the independent variable(s).

The independent variables for this study were gender, teachers' attractiveness level, and teaching philosophies.

3. Identify the dependent variable(s).

The dependent variable was the teacher's approach to instruction.

4. Describe how the data were analyzed.

Researchers calculated the mean competency ratings of each teacher. The data was analyzed using ANOVA. Analysis of variance was used to identify significant main and interaction effects of teacher attractiveness, gender, and teaching philosophy on each of the eight evaluation scales and the significant interaction effects of the teacher competency ratings.

5. What was/were the major findings (s)?

No significant main effects on teacher attractiveness were found. Female teachers were rated significantly higher on the measure of overall effectiveness. Significant main effects for teaching philosophy were found on seven of the eight scales. Subjects rated teachers with a humanistic perspective higher on each of these scales. If the teacher was attractive, teaching philosophy did not affect ratings of classroom management ability. If subjects knew something about an instructor's teaching style and physical appearance, would that cease to be a critical factor in evaluations? The results of the study support this hypothesis. Attractiveness was not found to influence any of the ratings of teacher effectiveness. Although attractiveness alone did not influence the college seniors' ratings of teacher effectiveness, it did have an effect in combination with other factors. Specifically, the attractive authoritarian female was rated significantly more positively than the other three types of authoritarian teachers on four of the eight rating scales, including the scale of overall competence. Authoritarianism was strongly associated with negative teacher evaluations in this experiment. There is evidence that females, as a group, will tend to be less authoritarian in their behavior than males.

6. Were any limitations described in the study?

The limitations of the subject's gender and race were discussed, as well as the impact one's race can have on attractiveness ratings. I do not think there were any limitations described in this study.